My Fake-Dead Husband Came Crawling After I Became an Heiress novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: I Turned My Head

We reached the courthouse at ten past seven, with my blouse buttoned wrong and my hair still wet.

Cameras crowded the steps in a half circle, and my mother stood in the middle of them in her camel coat.

She had put on lipstick.

She had a tissue in one hand, and Dalton's mother stood a step behind her.

"I raised that girl," my mother said into six microphones. "I loved her more than my own life."

"Ms. Thornbury, what are you accusing her of?" a reporter called.

"I'm not accusing her." Her voice shook beautifully. "I'm only telling the truth, because Mr. Appleton is a sick man and no one is protecting him."

I stopped at the edge of the crowd.

Zane stopped beside me, with his phone already in his hand.

"Seven years ago," my mother said, "my daughter drugged a young man's drink and put him in a bed to trap him into marriage."

A murmur went through the crowd.

"I covered for her," my mother said. "God forgive me. I told myself it was a family matter. Now she has a dying man's fortune, and Dalton has come home to find his own wife a stranger."

She dabbed her eye.

"I'm only a mother," she said. "I'm only asking someone to look into her."

I walked up the courthouse steps.

A reporter noticed me first, then a cameraman, and then the whole half circle turned.

My mother saw their faces change and looked around.

For a second she did not look afraid.

She looked relieved.

"Hallie," she said softly. "Sweetheart. Let's not do this here."

"You called the cameras, Mom."

"I called them for you. I'm trying to help."

"Then help." I stopped one step below her. "You say I drugged Dalton. Tell them what I put in the glass."

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