CHAPTER THREE — A FAVOR WITH A PRICE

Belinda arrived at seven that evening carrying a laptop bag and a garment cover.
Jonah invited her to sit at the kitchen table.
She remained standing.
“Dorian says Priya was fired for insubordination.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“She’s been approaching clients with false claims.”
“Then the clients can check their rooms.”
“That’s not how commissioning works.”
“Explain how it works.”
Belinda pulled a printed sheet from her bag.
The sheet listed eleven Nestwell installations at offices, warehouses, and hospitals around the city.
Eight had a green completed mark.
Three had a yellow conditional mark.


“See?” she said.
“Those three sites are still pending.”
Jonah looked at the locations.
One was the Hollis Distribution Center, where his sister, Mallory, worked on the night shift.
Mallory had a three-year-old daughter and had applied to work mornings after the company announced the family room and its connected childcare scheduling program.
“Why is Hollis listed in green?” Jonah asked.
“Because the construction inspection was passed.”
“My sister says the door is still locked.”
“Access is a separate process.”
“Then why does the website say employees can book it tomorrow?”
Belinda stared at him.
“You’ve been checking our website?”
“Mallory sent me the link last week.”


Belinda folded the sheet.
“I came to ask you for something.”
Jonah remained silent.
“Dorian’s legal team wants a statement that I wasn’t working from home on Tuesday nights.”
“Why?”
“There’s a question about where I reviewed the project files.”
“Were you working from home?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then why would you make a statement that you weren’t?”
“Because most of the work was done at the office.”
“That’s different.”
She gripped the back of a chair.
“They think Priya downloaded proprietary planning material while she had access to my account.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why is this a question for me?”
“Because Dorian thinks you can confirm that I was with him on certain evenings.”


Jonah looked at her for a long time.
“You want me to provide an alibi for your affair.”
“No.”
“You want me to sign something that makes it sound like I knew where you were.”
“You knew I worked late.”
“I knew what you told me.”
“It’s just a formality.”
“Not to the person you’re accusing.”
Belinda pushed the chair backward.
“You make everything into a moral test.”
“You asked me to sign a statement about events I didn’t witness.”
“You could help me for once.”
“I spent eight years helping you.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Belinda’s eyes filled,

but she refused to wipe them.
She opened her laptop bag and took out a dark blue folder instead.
“These are the terms Dorian negotiated for me.”
Jonah did not touch it.
“He’ll cover a rental apartment for six months and help with my legal expenses.”
“What does he receive?”
“He wants the transition to be quiet.”
“Quiet for whom?”
“Everyone.”
“The man who’s sleeping with you wants your husband to sign a false statement, and you’ve brought his proposed transition plan into our kitchen.”
“Stop saying it like that.”
“Tell me how else to say it.”
She sat down finally.


For the first time all evening, she looked exhausted rather than triumphant.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
Jonah closed his eyes briefly.
“How far along?”
“About nine weeks.”
He calculated the dates without speaking.
There had been evenings together during that period.
He had no way to know the child’s paternity.
“Have you had a medical appointment?”
“Yes.”
“Are you safe?”
She looked surprised by the question.
“Yes.”
“Then I won’t press you tonight.”
“Dorian thinks the baby is his.”
“Do you?”
Belinda stared down at her hands.
“I don’t know.”
The truth was smaller and more frightening than either of them had imagined.


Jonah pushed the blue folder back toward her.
“I won’t sign anything about your work or your whereabouts.”
“What about us?”
“We’ll have to discuss that through people who aren’t trying to make us lie.”
Belinda looked at the folder as though it had suddenly become very heavy.
She stood and left it on the table.
After she drove away, Jonah placed it in the hallway closet without reading it.
He did not want another man’s plan becoming the only plan in his house.

CHAPTER FOUR — THE DOOR THAT DIDN’T OPEN

Mallory called before six the next morning.
“You know that family room the company keeps advertising?” she asked.


“Yes.”
“There’s a sign on it now saying it opens Monday.”
“Is that good?”
“The sign is taped across a plywood door.”
Jonah sat upright in bed.
“What?”
“The room behind it is still being used to store pallets of packing tape.”
“Have you told your supervisor?”
“We all have.”
Mallory sounded furious.
“They moved twelve employees onto different schedules because this facility was supposed to open.”
“What did the supervisor say?”
“He said the vendor certified it.”
Jonah remembered the green check beside Hollis.
“Please don’t make childcare decisions based on that sign.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”


“I’m not blaming you.”
“Then tell me whether Belinda knows what’s happening.”
“I asked her, and I didn’t get a clear answer.”
Mallory sighed.
“I need to get my daughter to preschool.”
The call ended.
Jonah stared at the ceiling, then dialed the number Priya had used.
“I’m not asking you for gossip,” he said when she answered.
“Good.”
“My sister works at Hollis, and they’re changing schedules because of this room.”
“I know.”
“Can you meet her directly?”
“Absolutely.”
“Not me.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
She gave him the name of a Hollis employee representative who had already requested a meeting.


Jonah passed the contact to Mallory and stayed out of the discussion.
He went to work and repaired a tin marquee letter whose bulbs had been flickering for months.
At noon his supervisor asked whether he could deliver a finished sign to an office on West Terrace.
He checked the address and realized it was two blocks from Nestwell’s headquarters.
He almost refused, then decided refusing would give the address more power than it deserved.
The delivery took fifteen minutes.
On the walk back to his van, he spotted Belinda standing outside the Nestwell building with Dorian.
Dorian was tall,

carefully dressed, and smiling as he spoke into his headset.
Belinda’s shoulders were tight beneath her coat.
When Dorian noticed Jonah, he took off the headset and approached before Belinda could say anything.
“Jonah, I presume.”
“Yes.”
“Dorian Kells.”
“I know.”
Dorian extended a hand.
Jonah did not take it.
“I hear you’re worried about a few finishing touches at our sites,” Dorian said.
“I’m worried about my sister making childcare arrangements based on an opening date.”
“Construction is complex.”
“Then don’t advertise completion until it’s complete.”
Dorian’s smile sharpened.
“Belinda has told me you’re taking this separation hard.”
Jonah glanced at his wife.


She looked at the pavement.
“I’m not discussing my marriage with you,” he said.
“Of course.”
Dorian leaned closer.
“I’ll also suggest that contacting my former employee is unwise.”
“Priya contacted me.”
“She has a grievance.”
“Then the company should answer it with facts.”
Dorian’s expression went flat for half a second.
“We intend to.”
Jonah stepped around him and walked to the van.
Belinda called his name.
He turned.
“Don’t make this a fight at my workplace,” she said.
“I delivered a sign two blocks away.”
“Then keep walking.”
Jonah nodded once.
“I already was.”
He left before Dorian could reply.


That afternoon, Nestwell’s website quietly removed the Hollis opening date.
Mallory sent Jonah a screenshot of the earlier page.
Under the cheerful photograph of a mother rocking a sleeping baby, a caption still promised that the company’s spaces were ready when working parents needed them most.
The photograph had been taken at a different site.

CHAPTER FIVE — THE FIRST HONEST CONVERSATION

Jonah met attorney Frances Bell on Friday morning.
She worked from a small office above a pharmacy, and her waiting room smelled faintly of lemon cleaner.
He brought his spreadsheet and a list of questions.
Frances listened without interrupting while he described the affair, the pregnancy, the mortgage, and the proposed statement.
“Do not sign statements you cannot personally verify,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
He asked about separating finances without disrupting normal household payments.
She explained the difference between maintaining records, preserving necessary expenses, and taking actions that could later be interpreted as hiding property.
He wrote down her recommendations.
Then he asked how paternity should be handled.
Frances did not give him the certainty he wanted.
“Keep the question separate from the anger,” she said.
“You and Belinda will need medical and legal guidance when the appropriate time comes.”
Jonah nodded.
He felt embarrassed by his desire for an immediate answer.
He had spent a night wanting the baby to belong unmistakably to someone else because that would make his decision easier.
Now he was ashamed of treating a child’s existence as a shortcut through heartbreak.
When the appointment ended, Frances handed back his spreadsheet.
She had circled its title with a blue pen.
“I recommend a more neutral name for any document you intend to share,” she said.
Jonah looked at OPERATION BYE-BYE BELINDA and laughed for the first time in two days.
“Fair point.”
He renamed the file Household Transition Inventory before leaving.
On the stairwell, he received a message from Belinda.
Dorian says you’re threatening him.
Jonah stopped walking.
I haven’t threatened him, he replied.
I asked him not to advertise a service that isn’t ready.
Belinda typed for nearly a minute.
Then her answer appeared.
He says you’ll regret embarrassing him.
Jonah stared at the screen.
That sounded more like a threat than anything he had said.
He forwarded the message to Frances for his records.
At home, he found a bouquet of white lilies on the porch.
A card beneath the ribbon read, We can still handle this professionally.
There was no signature.
Jonah carried the bouquet inside, placed it in a vase, and left the card on the counter.
He considered throwing the flowers away.
Instead he put them beside the blue folder where their message could not be mistaken for affection.
Later that afternoon, Belinda called.
“Are the flowers there?”
“Yes.”
“Dorian sent them as an apology.”
“An apology for what?”
“He knows yesterday was uncomfortable.”
“His message through you was that I’d regret embarrassing him.”
“He didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did he mean it?”
Belinda hesitated.
“He’s under a lot of pressure.”
“So are the employees waiting for those rooms.”
“Will you stop bringing them into every conversation?”
“I didn’t bring them into the flower delivery.”
She went silent again.
Then she whispered, “I’m scared.”
Jonah’s chest tightened.
“Of what?”
“Of losing everything at once.”
He sat down.
“Are you afraid Dorian will hurt you?”
“No.”
“Is he pressuring you to sign something?”
“I can’t discuss it.”
“Belinda, you can choose someone independent to advise you.”
“If I do that, he’ll think I’m turning against him.”
“That isn’t a reason to go without advice.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then speak to someone who does.”
He gave her Frances’s office number and told her the attorney could recommend separate counsel.
Belinda said she would think about it.
After she hung up, Jonah sat alone with the lilies and wished an apology were as simple as flowers.