He Let Our Daughter Die for Twenty-Three Dollars novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: What I Read

Colter's POV

I knew I was in trouble when I timed the five minutes Sheldon had with the baby on my own watch.

I told myself it was the job.

A husband alone with a baby, a mother ready to run for the door, a caseworker at the frame.

But I had not looked at Sheldon once.

I had looked at the back of Annabel's neck the whole time, where her hair had come loose from its tie.

When he left, she stood in the hall with her daughter asleep against her and didn't move.

"Annabel."

"I'm all right."

"You gave him the room and he said it out loud. That took something."

"It took nothing from him." She started up the stairs. "I want a coffee, and then I want to know what happens next."

I made the coffee.

I put it on the kitchen table, and she sat across from me with a spiral notebook open, because of course she had a plan to write down.

"Carol wants to visit," she said. "I say yes, here, with the recorder running. Sheldon keeps quiet at his dinner."

"That works."

"And you find out who touched that email account on the other end. The Fund's treasurer, the bank."

"I'm already on it."

She wrote a line.

"Between my first call and the day you came," she said, without looking up. "You already had my folder. What was in it?"

I went still.

I could have said the emails.

I could have said a summary, a few words, and let the subject drop.

My sister's husband had lied to me with a smile for six years, and I had decided a long time ago that I would never be a man who did that to a woman who was trusting me.

"The emails," I said. "The wire instructions, and a sworn statement from Carol. Four pages from Sheldon's lawyer, who had sent them to the hospital's social worker, who sent them to me."

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