All Chapters of THE LIE I MARRIED : Chapter 31 - Chapter 34

Victor straightened up like he'd just told us the weather."Not here," he said. "I won't have this conversation in front of a hundred people holding champagne. Come with me. Both of you."I felt Adrian's hand tighten on my elbow. "Why would we?""Because you want to know why, and I want to tell you." He smiled, tired around the edges. "I've been waiting a long time to say it out loud to someone who'd actually listen. Don't you think that's worth four minutes?"He didn't wait for an answer. He turned and walked off through the crowd, nodding at people, touching a shoulder here, laughing at something someone said, and I watched him go with the strange, sick feeling that he was walking us out of a trap by leading us into one."Don't go," I said, low."I have to." Adrian didn't look at me. "I've been trying to ask him for weeks.""Then I'm coming.""Lucy—""You're not going in there alone, and neither am I letting him think I'll sit in a corner." I took his arm. "Move."It was a small roo

The dark sedan was still there.I saw it from the end of my father's street, the same car from the photograph, nosed in against the curb across from the faded blue door. A man sat behind the wheel with a coffee cup on the dashboard. He didn't look at me. He looked at nothing, with the careful boredom of someone who's been told not to be noticed.I'd been afraid of that car the night before. I'd looked at a picture of it on a tablet and felt my throat close.This morning I walked straight past it. I took the cracked front path, climbed the two steps, and knocked on the door I'd walked through ten thousand times, and for the first time in my life I didn't feel like a child doing it.Alexander and Eleanor were back at the mansion, working through her statement with Mr. Brandt. Adrian had offered to come with me. I'd said no. Some conversations you have to walk into alone.My father opened the door in his reading glasses and a cardigan with a button missing."Lucy." He glanced past me at