He Killed Me Then Loved Me novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Play It Louder
Lucille came down the three marble steps in her heels.
She walked across the floor, and the donors drew back to let her through.
"Lucille," Everard said, very softly. "Not now."
"Yes. Now."
She stopped in the center of the ballroom, beside her husband, and faced the room.
"My name is Lucille Chichester," she said into the microphone. "For twelve years I have been the wife of a man who killed a woman and left her to die."
The silence in the room broke.
Someone dropped a glass.
"Lucille," Everard said. "You are unwell."
"I was in the second car." She did not look at him. "I came around the curve on Route 44 and found him sitting in the road. A young mother was still alive in the wreck."
A murmur rose and broke.
"I told him to call an ambulance," she said. "He told me to think about our son."
"This is slander," Everard said.
"And I did." Her voice finally shook. "I stood there for twelve minutes, and I thought about our son. That woman was Hallie Preble's mother. Her daughter is standing in front of you in a gold dress."
Two hundred faces turned to me.
I heard my own breath.
"She is nineteen now," Lucille said. "Everard has paid for her school every year. He has called it charity. It was hush money."
"Stop her," a man said somewhere, to nobody.
Nobody moved.
Everard stepped forward and took hold of her elbow.
"My wife is exhausted," he said to the room, in his gentlest voice. "She has been under strain since our son's accident. We'll take her home."
Lucille pulled her arm away.
"Don't touch me," she said, and the whole front of the room heard it.
Phillip let go of my hand.
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