Chapter 5: Back Then

"I didn't do anything to Jillian," I said.

"She's sitting in my office crying." His voice was flat and cold. "She says you humiliated her in front of a room full of strangers."

"She walked into the bakery filming me."

"What were you even doing in a bakery?"

"Getting a job."

There was a pause on the line.

"Come home," he said. "Now."

He hung up.

Wesley was still crouched in front of me.

He'd heard every word. The kitchen was that quiet.

"You don't have to go," he said.

"I do. My whole life is in that house."

"Then I'm driving you."

"Wes."

"I'll wait at the end of the street. I won't come in." He stood. "But I'm not letting you drive forty minutes shaking like that."

I let him drive.

He parked two houses down, under a maple that had already gone red.

"One text," he said. "I'll be at the door in a minute."

The house was lit up when I walked in.

Jillian was curled on my sofa with a blanket around her shoulders.

Biscuit lay across her feet.

Her eyes were red, and her phone was in her lap.

Our housekeeper stood in the kitchen doorway with a dish towel in her hands.

She had kept this house for twelve years. She'd been here long before me.

She gave me a tiny shake of her head.

Langston stood by the fireplace with his jacket still on.

He had his phone out.

He turned the screen to me.

It was Jillian's video, paused on my face behind the counter.

"Forty thousand views," he said. "My wife, in an apron, calling Jillian a liar."

"I didn't call her anything."

"You asked her to name children, like it was a quiz." He tossed the phone on the coffee table. "In front of cameras."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Shadow of Her: When He Realized Too Late from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.