The Perfect Husband's Darkest Secret novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Her Own Name

I did not wait for the story to be told for me.

I pulled on yesterday's dress, took a drawing off the refrigerator and walked out the front door.

Ansel stood at my shoulder.

"You don't have to do this," he said.

"Yes, I do."

The drawing was Poppy's.

It showed a stick-figure mother and a stick-figure girl and a very large otter, all standing beside a blue squiggle that was the lake.

I held it in front of me where the cameras could see it.

Eleven microphones swung toward me as I came down the gravel.

"Mrs. Reeve! Are you safe?"

"Emme, are you taking your medication?"

"Is it true you left your husband for another man?"

I stopped at the gate and waited until they ran out of questions.

"My name is Emme Wray Reeve," I said. "I am not missing, and I am not unwell."

A cameraman at the back lowered his lens, then lifted it again.

"Three months ago I left my husband," I said. "I took my six-year-old daughter, and I told no one where we were going. I did that because my husband was having an affair with my sister."

A murmur ran through the crowd.

"For seven months my husband handed me a cup of tea every night," I went on. "A laboratory has tested it, and the tea was poison."

Nobody asked a question.

"I have the lab report. I have a pharmacist's signed statement. I will give both to any judge in this state."

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