Semua Bab The wife I swore I’d never be : Bab 131 - Bab 140

Callum He'd turned his phone off after the fourth missed call, not because he wanted to hide from Donald forever, but because the buzzing had started making his daughter look up from her homework every time it went off, and he needed thirty uninterrupted minutes more than he needed to keep pretending everything was ordinary. He'd recorded the statement in his own kitchen, phone propped against a stack of cookbooks, his daughter asleep upstairs and the recording app running longer than he expected it to. Twenty-two minutes, in the end. Dates. The pharmacy on Deel Street. The exact wording of the instruction that sent him there. Jade Hanslow's name, said slowly, clearly, twice, so there could be no mistaking it on playback. He sent it to the number Marcus had given him the moment it finished uploading, watched the small bar fill from left to right, and did not breathe properly until it read delivered. Then he'd packed a bag for his daughter. Not much. Two changes of clothes, the st

Anita We drove to Margaret's house at two in the morning, all four of us in Marcus's car, nobody speaking until we were nearly there. The house sat dark except for a single lamp in an upstairs window, the one Callum said belonged to the room where he'd found the housekeeper crying two nights ago. Marcus parked two streets over, out of habit, the same careful instinct that had kept this whole investigation alive as long as it had. "Donald's not here," Callum said, checking the drive as we approached on foot. "His car's gone. I don't know where, and I don't like not knowing, but it means we have the house to ourselves for however long that lasts." The housekeeper answered the door before we'd finished climbing the front steps, already awake, already dressed, as though she'd been expecting exactly this knock at exactly this hour for days. "She's been agitated tonight," the housekeeper said, leading us up the stairs. "Restless. I think she knows something's different. I think she's

Anita The safe held three things. A folder, thick, the edges soft with age. A small leather notebook, older than the one Donald himself carried, its cover cracked in a way that suggested decades rather than years. And beneath both, a single photograph, black and white, curling slightly at one corner. I lifted the folder out first, my hands still not entirely steady from the combination, from the doctor's car, from everything the last hour had asked of me. "Careful," Marcus said, crouching beside me. "If this is what we think it is, we want it intact for whoever looks at it after us." I opened it slowly. Old court records. A photocopy of a signed confession, dated decades back, my own family's name printed at the top in a clerk's careful hand. Bank documents showing funds moved and mismanaged, the actual theft, the one Walter had been made to carry. "This is it," I said quietly. "This is proof. Actual, documented proof that Walter never took anything." "Whose signature is on t

Anita He was waiting in the kitchen when I came in, standing rather than sitting, a mug of something untouched on the counter beside him. "You went for a drive," he said. Not a question. "Couldn't sleep." I hung my coat, buying myself the same few seconds of composure I'd been buying for weeks, checking my own face in the dark reflection of the window glass before I turned around. "I didn't want to wake you pacing around the house." "You could have told me. I'd have come with you." "I needed to be alone with my own head for a bit. That's all it was." He studied me for a long moment, and I made myself hold still under it, the way you hold still for something that might sting less if you don't flinch first. "Margaret's doctor came by tonight," he said. "Unscheduled. The housekeeper called him, worried." My whole body went very carefully calm. "Is she alright?" "He says she's stable. Agitated, but stable." Donald's eyes hadn't left my face once since I'd walked in. "He also me

Anita The detective's office was smaller than I expected, cluttered with case files stacked in careful towers along one wall, a single window letting in grey morning light that hadn't quite decided whether to become a proper day yet. Marcus made the introductions fast. Detective Whitfield, no relation to Clara as far as any of us knew, a retired man in his sixties, grey at the temples, who shook each of our hands once, firmly, and said almost nothing. My father arrived last, five minutes past nine, his coat still damp from the walk in, his face doing something complicated the moment he saw me standing there. "Anita." "You're here," I said. "That's what matters right now." He crossed the room and took both my hands, and for a moment neither of us said anything else. "I brought everything," he said. "The account of the borrowed car. What I remember about the smell. What Donald said to me, that sentence about not losing things he'd decided to keep. I wrote it all down again last