They Toasted the Happy Couple, So I Bought the Groom novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Desk by the Copier

Marigold makes Iris her coffee girl at the Cromwell Building while Gerald hunts the buyer, Clive lies to the family to hide her, and when the cure deadline passes Gerald reads aloud the name of Kestrel's new director: Iris Cromwell.

On Monday morning Marigold gave me a desk next to the copier.

"It's temporary," she said, and set a sticky note on the monitor. "Oat milk latte, extra hot. The place on Boston Street, not the lobby."

I had taken two weeks of leave from my real job to sit at this desk.

Odessa had asked me if I was sure. Then she'd laughed and told me to bring her back a story.

"Anything else?" I asked my sister.

"Take notes at ten. Daddy likes minutes."

The Cromwell Building smelled the way it always had, of diesel from the docks and burnt coffee from the break room.

Through the top-floor windows the cranes swung over the harbor.

I'd worked on this floor from twenty-two to twenty-six. Half the people walking past my copier had trained under me.

Most of them didn't stop.

One of the old dispatchers set a muffin on my desk without a word and kept walking.

At ten I took notes while Marigold stood at the front of the conference room and presented a plan to merge the two warehouse routes.

It was my plan.

I had written it at twenty-five. She had changed the font.

"Brilliant, honey," my father said.

Berenice, at his elbow, turned a page and didn't look up.

Clive sat at the far end of the table with a legal pad and did not look at me once.

He looked tired. Newlyweds were supposed to look tired. He looked as though he hadn't slept in days.

After the meeting my father kept us in the room.

"I want a name by Tuesday," he said.

He said it to the table, but he was looking at Clive.

"Who owns my paper, Clive?"

My stomach didn't move. I'd trained it not to.

"I'm finding out," Clive said.

"Find out faster." My father leaned back. "And Clive. If these people call your guarantee, you're on the hook, not me."

"I know what I signed, Gerald."

"Then you know family covers family. If it comes to it, you'll cover it."

Marigold squeezed Clive's arm. "He will, Daddy."

Clive looked at his legal pad.

I wrote in the minutes: Mr. Cromwell asked Mr. Mercer to cover the company's debt personally.

Then I underlined it.

The week went like that.

Marigold sent me for lunch twice a day and once for dry cleaning.

On Wednesday she had me reprint the wedding seating chart, framed, for her office wall.

"So I never forget who was there," she said.

On Thursday she told the receptionist, loud enough for the whole floor, that I was "still a little fragile about the wedding," so be gentle with me.

The receptionist brought me a box of tissues.

I used one to clean the copier glass.

Tuesday, June 30, came hot and white over the harbor.

At four o'clock my father called the family into his corner office.

Gerald, Marigold, Berenice, Clive. Me in a chair by the door with a notepad, because Marigold wanted minutes.

"Well?" my father said.

Clive opened a folder.

"Kestrel is a Delaware company formed fourteen months ago. Registered agent is a law office in Wilmington. No owner listed anywhere public."

He turned a page.

"I called the agent. They won't say. The notice was signed by a managing member. The signature's illegible."

It wasn't illegible.

I had signed it in block capitals.

Berenice took off her glasses. "You can compel disclosure. It'll take a month."

"We don't have a month," my father said. "We have an hour."

"Then pay it," Marigold said.

"With what, sweetheart?" My father laughed. "With the swans?"

Nobody else laughed.

Clive closed the folder and finally looked at me.

Just once. Across the room. Long enough for me to know he knew exactly what he'd done.

He had lied to his client, his father-in-law and his wife, all at once, with my name in his hand.

I didn't know why.

I wrote it down anyway.

At four fifty-five Marigold was scrolling her phone.

At five o'clock my father's desk clock chimed, an old brass thing he'd had since the first truck.

Nobody had paid.

At five-oh-two his email pinged.

He frowned at the screen, then read it out loud, to make sure we were all listening.

"Notice to the board of Cromwell Group. Note One remains uncured. Kestrel Holdings exercises its rights to the pledged shares and names its director to the board, effective immediately."

He scrolled.

"The director named is." He stopped.

He read it again, silently.

Marigold looked up from her phone. "Daddy?"

My father lifted his head and looked across the office at me, in my chair by the door, with my pen and my notepad.

"Iris Cromwell," he said.

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