You Are My Destiny novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: I Know

"You know," I said.

"I've known since the first night."

Phillip closed the ledger and sat back in the leather chair.

He looked tired and perfectly calm, and I wanted to throw the paperweight at his head.

"Then why is she wearing the ring?"

"Because I wanted to see who put it on her finger."

"You let her stand beside you on television."

"I let her say the name. I wanted to know who was behind the curtain."

"You let her kiss your hand."

"I let her think I was a fool."

He turned a pen in his scarred fingers.

"A fool is easy to lie to. Dewitt hasn't been careful in a week."

I stared at him.

"She can't hum," Phillip said. "The first thing I asked her was to hum the song. She hummed a hymn."

"That's all?"

"Her hands are soft."

"The woman I married had a burn on her left wrist and a split knuckle, and she smelled like dill and lake water."

"Rosalind DeGraff smells like a department store."

He looked up, and the gray eyes were steady and cold.

"I spent two years learning people by what they didn't say. I'm very good at it."

My heart was pounding.

"You were married to a woman for eight months," I said. "You never saw her."

"I knew every inch of her hands."

He said it like a plain fact, and it went through me.

I looked away at the cold fire.

"Dewitt threatened my daughter," I said.

I told him all of it, from the envelope to the phone sinking in the pond.

Phillip listened without moving.

When I reached the dock his hand closed around the pen so hard that it snapped.

Ink ran black down his palm, across the fishhook scar.

He looked at it as if it belonged to someone else.

"He said that," Phillip said, very softly. "To you. About a six-year-old."

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