All Chapters of The Exit Wife: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

When exactly are you planning to give Adrian a child, Elena?"Margaret's voice cut through the dinner table like a blade wrapped in silk. I froze, my fork suspended halfway to my plate, the candlelight casting sharp shadows across her face. She smiled, that practiced smile that never reached her eyes.The dining room went quiet. ."I'm simply curious," Margaret continued, turning to the guests seated around the mahogany table. "Six years is rather a long time, don't you think? One would expect at least one grandchild by now."Heat crawled up my neck. I set the fork down carefully, deliberately, as if the china might shatter under the weight of her words."The doctors said—" I started."The doctors say many things." Margaret's manicured fingers wrapped around her wine glass. "But results, darling, are what matter."Adrian sat beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body, far enough that he felt like a stranger. I waited for just one word, just one look at least that

The words didn't register at first. Worsened. As if there was a scale I should understand, as if there were degrees of dying I could measure against each other."What do you mean worsened?" I stood up, my legs unsteady beneath me. "He was in surgery. You said you were doing everything you could."The doctor, the one with kind eyes who had just told me my parents' accident wasn't an accident, gestured urgently toward the corridor. "We need to move quickly. His bleeding has increased. We need your permission to perform an emergency procedure."Adrian's hand found the small of my back, grounding me. I could feel him there, solid and present, even as the room seemed to tilt sideways.I hurried after the doctor, struggling to keep pace. My fingers curled tightly around the strap of my bag. "What kind of procedure?" The question slipped out automatically. I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. "Will it save him? What are his chances?”The doctor's hesitation was already an answer."T

The funeral service was held five days later. The church was full of people I barely knew. Relatives of my parents, family friends, business associates. They came to pay their respects and to stare at me with varying degrees of pity and suspicion.Adrian never left my side. His hand was on my back, on my arm, holding mine. He was the only solid thing in a world that had become suddenly unstable.Margaret stood near the front of the church, perfectly composed in her black dress, her expression appropriately mournful. But her eyes kept finding me.After the service, as people mingled in the church hall, a woman I vaguely recognized approached me. One of Margaret's friends."Elena, dear," she said. "What a terrible ordeal you've been through.""Thank you for your kindness," I replied automatically.After the funeral. I returned back to Hales's Mansion.The house felt wrong.I could sense it the moment I stepped through the front door of Hale Mansion. The air was different. Like something

I left for my bedroom immediately so that I wouldn't get caught eavesdropping.I didn't sleep.I lay in bed beside Adrian, listening to the grandfather clock in the hall strike the hours. One o'clock, two, three. My mind wouldn't stop circling around Margaret's words, around Vanessa's soft voice asking if Adrian would accept. Around the question of what exactly Margaret was planning him to accept.By the time morning light filtered through the curtains, I'd made a decision. I needed to watch. To observe. To find the cracks in whatever this was before it consumed everything.Breakfast was laid out in the dining room when I came downstairs. Adrian was already there, reading the newspaper with a cup of tea at his elbow. But it wasn't the cup I'd prepared for him the way he liked it, with two sugars and barely any milk. This cup was darker, stronger. The way someone else apparently knew he preferred it.My chest tightened as I watched him take a sip without even noticing the difference.V

I waited, my breath caught in my throat. Adrian stood there, the photograph still in his hand, his face a mixture of fear and resignation."There's more," he said quietly. "There has to be. The letters, the photograph, the way she acts, I'm beginning to suspect too. And if we are right, if she's really the girl from university which I doubt could be her, then my mother..." He trailed off, running his hand through his hair. "My mother had to have known. She had to have deliberately brought her here."I moved closer to him. For the first time in days, I didn't feel like his enemy. I felt like we were standing on the same side of something dangerous."We need to find out for certain," I said. "We need to get her to tell us something about herself."Adrian looked at me, and I saw the moment he made a decision. He nodded slowly."Tomorrow," he said. "I'll engage her in conversation. I'll ask her about university, about her past. If she's the girl from those letters, she won't be able to he