My Husband Ignored My Thirty-Day Countdown

CHAPTER 4: A Stranger Offered Me Everything And Asked For Nothing

•MARIELLE•

The kitchen table is covered in notebooks.

There are numbers everywhere, little boxes around ideas that may seem brilliant at midnight and definitely ridiculous by morning. My handwriting gets messier the later it gets. By page six, I can barely read my own math.

But I don't care, because I’ve already decided that I'm keeping this baby, and I'm building something of my own.

Nothing that has Desmond's name on it, and also nothing I'll ever have to explain to a room full of people who've already decided what kind of wife I am.

The next week disappears into meetings. Mostly small investors. Men in glass offices who promise me fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes of rejection, different buildings, and give me exactly what they did promise me. Every time, I keep my pitch simple. These numbers are mine. This model is mine. And none of it came from anywhere I wasn't allowed to take it from.

Most of the meetings always end the same way.

"This is interesting," one man calls out, already checking his watch. "Let me have my team look it over and we'll follow up."

That’s all they always say. They never do.

Another man actually laughs right in my face. He leans back into his chair like I've just told the funniest joke he's heard all week.

"Does your husband know you're playing businesswoman?"

Those words sting so bad that I expected them to, and it's not because they’re clever but because for one ugly ass second they sound exactly like something the old version of me would’ve right out believed. But I don’t react. I decided that I was not going to be giving them the reaction they expected. So, I stand up to my feet and shake his hand. My mom raised me to shake hands, even when all I want to do is to break someone's fingers. Then I leave.

By the time I get to my car that’s parked in the driveway of this property, my jaw is hurting from how hard I've been clenching it.

I open the door and sit behind the wheel for maybe ten minutes, just breathing and waiting for my hands to stop shaking enough to drive.

That night, an old friend from a work conference calls and invites me to a networking event. It’s probably out of pity, because I mean who wants to work with a woman who’s seen as pathetic? I almost say no, until I hear my own voice saying yes before I can change my mind.

I pull my hair back the way I used to for board meetings nobody remembers I attended. I put on a sharp blazer.

If I don't feel like I belong, maybe I can at least look like I do. I tell myself that this is the last pitch, and that if this one goes the same way as the others did, then I’ll just go home, eat instant noodles and pretend tomorrow will somehow be different.

I'm halfway through my second pitch of the night, some man near the front already looking at his phone, when a voice calls out from the back.

"Wait. Go back. What's your churn prediction window?"

I stop and my eyes instantly find him. He's leaning forward now, his elbows on his knees, looking at the numbers I’ve put up instead of his phone.

I answer, then he asks me another question, and then another as I continue with my replies. It’s not the kind of question people ask to sound interested but the kind of questions that tell me he’s been following every single thing I’ve said.

His name is Graham Voss.

After everyone leaves, he buys me a coffee.

"Walk me through it again," he says. "Slower this time."

So I do as I’m told, carefully watching his face the whole time waiting to see a change in demeanor maybe, because this is usually the part where people's eyes glaze over, where they nod without actually listening to what someone has got to say, and where they start thinking about how to end the conversation. But it never happens.

By the time I’m done walking him through the whole thing, he doesn’t say anything. But instead just keeps looking at me, then at me, and then back at the numbers that are spread across the materials of this huge table.

My stomach starts tightening like it’s been spring these past days, because I mean who would want to invest in me? Nobody. I expect the polite rejection to come out of his mouth, the fake smile, and the usual ‘we’ll keep in touch’. But instead, all the man does is lean way back into his chair as his pointer and middle fingers come up to his lips to twist.

"I want to fund this," he says it so simply that for a moment I honestly think I heard him wrong. "Full stop. Fair terms, nothing weird attached."

I blink.

So that’s it?

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know your numbers. That's usually the part that matters."

I study him for a second.

“Why?” The word tumbles its way out of my lips before I can stop it. “Why me?” I repeat once again but this time louder than the first. “Why take a chance on a stranger with a business plan that’s spread across three notebooks and nothing to prove she can pull it off?”

He shrugs easily like it isn’t a life-changing decision.

"Risk is the whole job," he says. "You're the first person in months who's actually made me want to say yes."

Three days later, I'm sitting across from him in a lawyer's office, signing paperwork that makes everything real. My name. My company. Something I can call mine, and something that was built on nothing but only the ideas in my head.

I sign the last page and just sit there for some time with the pen still in my hand.

I look down at my signature that’s sleeping beautifully on an important document and realize that I did this. Nobody handed this to me, but I built it. Brick by brick.

It's the first time in over a year that I feel like myself again instead of somebody's forgotten wife.

Night comes by, and I'm still thinking about it while sitting on the edge of my bed, surrounded by boxes I still haven't unpacked, when my phone rings.

A smile slips onto my face when I see it's Owen calling.

"Hey,” I say. “You're not going to believe the day I…"

"Marielle," he says tightly, and the way his voice sounds is enough to make my smile disappear. "Desmond hired a private investigator weeks ago."

I stop breathing.

F*ck, no.

"Okay," I say slowly. "Okay... and?"

"The investigator narrowed it down." He pauses, taking a breath as if he doesn’t want to say the next words and in the same moment my heartbeat stumbles and I get the instant urge to run to the toilet and throw up whatever is in my stomach. No. Not already. "To your city."

Everything inside me drops. I can't even find the correct words.

"He doesn't have your name yet, Marielle. But he's standing in the right zip code." He takes another pause. "That's too close for comfort."

I stay frozen on the edge of the bed, my phone still pressed against my ear and my eyes drifting to the unpacked boxes scattered around the apartment.

I just started over. I just built this. Please… Not yet.

All I can think of is that the life I just newly built with my own two hands might already be starting to crack before it's even had the chance to stand.