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CHAPTER 126: PRENTISS ROAD CONT’D
publish date:
2026-07-26 00:26:01
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HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 126: PRENTISS ROAD CONT’D
I looked at the fountain.The water moving because that was what it did.“Dominic,” I said.“Yes,” he said.“Does Cole still exist?” I said. “As a problem. If Daniel’s message goes anywhere, if he uses what he knows about that night — does Cole become a problem.”He was quiet.“Cole died four years ago,” he said. “The connection died with him.”I absorbed this.“So Daniel’s leverage,” I said.“Is limited,” he said. “The fact of my being in the vicinity that night, the limited statement — that’s what he has. Nothing that ties me to Cole anymore.” He paused. “He’s hoping I don’t know that. He’s hoping the threat of the connection is enough.”I turned from the window.“He doesn’t know Cole is dead,” I said.“No,” he said.“Then his message is a bluff,” I said.“Largely,” he said.I looked at him.“Largely,” I said.He looked at the table.“The limited statement,” he said. “The fact that I withheld information from the original investigation. That’s real. That has consequences regardless
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 125: PRENTISS ROAD
BELLA’S POVNobody moved.My mother’s coffee was between her hands and she was looking at the table with the quality of a woman who understood that what was about to happen in this kitchen required her stillness more than her presence and was giving it.I looked at Dominic.He looked at the window.The clear Sunday morning outside, the washed light, the garden doing the thing it did after rain — everything slightly more itself, the colors deeper, the fountain louder in the cleaner air.“Tell me,” I said.He looked at his hands on the table.“The night your father died,” he said. “October fourteenth.”I held the edge of the table.“I was in the area,” he said.The kitchen.The Sunday.“What area,” I said.“Prentiss Road,” he said. “Or near it. The neighborhood.” He looked at the window. “I had been to see someone. A client, a former client — it doesn’t matter who. The meeting ran late. I was driving home.”I looked at him.“You were there,” I said.“Not on the road itself,” he said. “T
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 124: THE WEEKEND CONT’D
The rain doing the thing it had been doing all day, the October insistence of it.I leaned down and kissed him.Not the dining room birthday kiss. Not the soft careful library first kiss. Something in between — the warmth of two people who had been in a house together all day with the rain outside and had arrived at the end of the day’s patience with the careful.He kissed me back.His hand moved from my knee.I shifted from the arm of the chair.The library.The rain.His hands and the close range of him and the warmth of the adjacent chair becoming the no-longer-adjacent chair, the two of us in it, the book on the floor where it had fallen.After a while — not long, the specific not-long of two people who had been careful for three months and were finding the edges of the careful — he pulled back.Just far enough.The close range.His forehead against mine.“Monday,” he said.Not a stop. The acknowledgment.“Monday,” I said.I stayed where I was.He stayed where he was.The rain.“I
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 123: THE WEEKEND
BELLA’S POVSaturday morning arrived without ceremony.I woke at seven to the sound of rain — the October kind, the rain that had made up its mind and was not going to be hurried. It hit the window with the flat insistence of weather that intended to stay, the garden below already darkened, the east beds running with water, the fountain indistinguishable from the rain in the general grey.I lay in bed and thought about Monday.Then I thought about Richard.Then I stopped thinking about both of those things because I had promised myself the weekend, or the version of the weekend that was available given everything currently in motion, and lying in bed cataloguing threats at seven in the morning was not the weekend I had in mind.I got up.Dominic was already in the kitchen.Not the suit — the Saturday version, the dark shirt, the version of him that existed when the day had no formal obligations. He was at the counter reading something on his phone with the focused attention of a man a
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 122: THE CONDITION CONT’D
Richard Hayes looking at Thomas Morgan’s daughter in the entrance of his brother’s house.Something moved through his face.Not agreement. Not the warm recalibration of a man won over. Something more complicated — the face of someone receiving a challenge they hadn’t expected to find credible and were finding credible anyway.“He’s in the study,” I said.I stepped back from the door.He came through.He went down the corridor.The study door.His knock.Dominic’s voice.The door opening and closing.I stood in the entrance hall and I listened to the silence of a house containing a conversation I was not part of and would not be part of and did not need to be part of.I went to the library.I sat in the window.I looked at the garden.The fountain.The east beds.The yew hedge at the far end.I pressed my hand flat against my coat pocket.The test inside it.Monday. The doctor. The confirmation.And between now and Monday: Richard in the study, the photograph on the tabloid site, Raine
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 121: THE CONDITION
BELLA’S POVHe didn’t tell me in the garden.He stood up, pocketed his phone, and looked at the gap in the yew hedge with the quality of a man who had received something large and needed to be in motion before he could think inside it. I watched him and I did not push. I had learned, over three months, that pushing Dominic Hayes toward a thing before he was ready produced the managed version of it, and the managed version was the last thing either of us needed this morning.I picked up the test from the bench.I put it in my coat pocket.We went through the hedge.He made calls from the study for an hour.I went to the library, not to read — I sat in the window and watched the garden and let the morning do what it was doing and thought about the will and the condition and the look on his face when the call came through.The look that had no catalogue entry.I had been building his vocabulary for three months. Every expression, every register, every version of the face that existed bet
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 2 : THE MOST TEMPTING MOMENT
BELLA’S POVHis hands were still on my waist. His breath was warm against my neck.And for one insane, terrifying second, I wondered what it would feel like if he didn't let go.I forced myself to sit up straighter, pulling away from him."Sorry," I mumbled.He didn't respond.The car kept moving.
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 1: MY MOTHER’S NEW HUSBAND
The front door slammed open with such force that the walls shook.I looked up from my laptop, heart hammering, as my mother stumbled inside like something was chasing her. Her eyes were wild, her chest heaving, her designer handbag, when did she get a designer handbag?—hanging crooked from her shou
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 5: THE MOVIE
BELLA'S POVI should have walked away the moment I heard the sound.That was the smart thing to do. The right thing. The thing any normal person would have done, turned around, gone back to their room, closed the door, pretended they'd heard nothing.But I have never, apparently, been particularly
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 3 : THE FORBIDDEN FEELING
BELLA’S POV For a second, neither of us moved. He just stood there, holding my underwear, his dark eyes locked on mine.I snatched it from his hand and shoved it behind my back. "I, I'm sorry. My bad.""I'm just going to take this and leave," he said, his voice tight. He grabbed whatever he'd been
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