Desperate Housewife? No, I'm Billion-Dollar Revenge novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Key

Rafe's POV

Claire did not cry in the courthouse lobby, and it frightened me more than tears would have.

She stood at the clerk's window with the phone against her ear while her lawyer explained that a father keeping a baby past visiting hours was a civil matter.

"Monday," I heard the lawyer say. "File the motion Monday."

"It's Saturday," Claire said.

"I know it is."

She hung up and looked at the revolving door that had not turned for her daughter.

"Phyllis," she said.

"Yes."

"Her hand went to her pocket. She went white. She knows where he is."

"Then we ask her."

"She won't tell me."

"She might tell a man who isn't her son's wife," I said.

Claire looked at me, then picked up her coat and her keys.

Phyllis lived in a brick ranch in Kettering with a ceramic goose on the porch, dressed for the rain.

She opened the door before I knocked.

She had her good coat on still and her pocketbook hung off her wrist.

"He dropped me at the curb," she said. "He said I looked tired."

"Where did he take her?" Claire said.

"I'd like to sit down."

We sat at her kitchen table under a clock shaped like a rooster.

Phyllis put her hand in her coat pocket and did not take it out.

I could see the outline of a small spiral notebook through the wool.

"I don't have to tell you anything," she said. "She's my granddaughter too."

"She is," Claire said. "She's fifteen weeks old, and she takes the formula with the blue lid."

Phyllis's mouth shook.

"He bought the red one on Thursday," she said. "I saw the bag in his car."

Nobody spoke.

The rooster ticked.

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