The Perfect Husband's Darkest Secret novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: No to Every Word

I had the truck door open before Ansel caught my wrist.

"Let go. That's my daughter, and that's a cup of poison."

"I know what it is," he said. "Look at who sent the photo."

I looked.

"She's not showing you a bed," he said. "She's asking you to come over there tonight and shout on the lawn. She wants you at their gate with the cameras still in town."

My hand stopped on the door.

*It would have been so much easier if you had just made a scene.* Camille had said that at my gate.

I shut the door and sat back.

"I hate that she's right about what I want to do," I said.

"She's not right about what you'll do."

I called the gray-haired officer from the first night.

He answered on the second ring.

"I'll park outside the house myself," he said quietly. "Nobody hands that child anything I haven't seen. I'll stay till morning."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me, ma'am. I took her off that lawn."

At the lake house I stood in the kitchen with my coat still on and did nothing.

My phone rang at nine.

*Dalton.*

I put it on speaker and set it on the counter between us.

"Em," he said. His voice was soft, the voice he used on donors. "I think we're both tired. Let's end this tonight."

"Go on."

"Withdraw the lab report. Sign the proxy back to me. Keep your twenty-nine percent and the lake house, and I'll never contest anything again. Poppy is in your bed by midnight."

Ansel did not move.

"And Camille?" I said.

"Gone. You'll never see her again. Is that not what you want?"

"Put Poppy on the phone."

There was a pause and a murmur, and then a small voice.

"Mommy?"

"Hi, baby. Are you okay?"

"Aunt Camille made me sleepy tea," she whispered. "I didn't drink it. I poured it in the plant."

I gripped the edge of the counter.

"Daddy puts the sleepy drops in yours, Mommy," she said. "I saw him. I never told, because he said you'd be sad."

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