He Married My Best Friend While I Gave Birth, So I Left novel · Chapter 17 of 48

Chapter 17: What Daphne Kept

I gave Daphne a towel and a chair at the far end of the kitchen table.

Byron stood by the stove with his arms folded and did not sit.

She had put on his old flannel shirt, and it hung to her knees.

She held the mug I'd poured her in both hands, but she didn't drink.

"Start with the lip," I said.

"His name is not important," said Daphne. "He's the foreman on my father's lake projects. He's married. He's the one at the club."

"The baseball cap."

"He came to the house tonight. He wanted to know why I'd stood up in a wedding dress next to another man when I was carrying his child."

"And you said?"

"That I was protecting the baby."

"From who?"

"From my father," she said, and her voice shook. "He'd disown me. He'd put the lake house in my brother's name by morning."

I sat down across from her.

I had known her face when she lied since the sixth grade.

It wasn't lying tonight.

"Say all of it," I said. "From July."

She breathed in.

"I found out in July. I went to Eleanor first, because I couldn't go to Dad. She said she could fix it."

"How?"

"A husband with a name," Daphne said. "She told me Brady had a wife who didn't suit him. She said you were sweet and you'd never be an Angell. She said my father's money was going to save the company, and what the company needed was a family."

"She picked you for the money."

"She picked me because I was already pregnant, and Brady was the only man she could make the father."

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