My Husband Pretended to Love Me novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Brake Line

Tamara's POV

He knocked on the back door at ten past ten, when I was mopping the kitchen floor alone.

I knew it was him before I looked.

Nobody else knocked three times, then waited.

I opened the door a few inches.

"I said you could not come back."

"I know." Stanley stood in the rain with his hands in his coat pockets, where I could see them. "I'm not asking to come in. I'm asking you to listen for five minutes, and then I'll go."

"You've got three."

"Darryl Wegner has been in prison for three years."

The mop handle slid against my palm.

"He was sentenced in October, in year seven. Aggravated battery. Twelve years, in Pontiac." His voice was flat and careful. "Lydia knew the day it happened. She called me that week and told me he was free and watching her. She told me to keep going."

I stared at him.

"Say that again."

"I kept our marriage up for three years to guard Lydia from a man who was already locked up."

I put the mop in the bucket and stepped back, and he took that as a yes and came into the kitchen.

He stood by the steel counter under the one bright light.

"How do you know?"

"Lydia told me herself tonight, easily, like it was nothing. She thinks she told me all along." He took out his phone. "Then I found this. I recorded our calls. I did it for ten years."

He held the phone out.

I listened to Lydia's voice say, "Don't you dare stop."

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