Room 14's Secret: The Heiress Who Outsmarted Her Betrayers novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Tea
I held my daughter and kept my voice slow.
"Edie. Look at me."
She lifted her face. It was wet.
"You didn't make anything happen. Not one thing. Do you understand?"
"But if Daddy goes away..."
"Then it's because of what grown-ups did. Not because a seven-year-old saw it."
She thought about that hard.
"Aunt Alicia lied," she said.
"Yes."
"About heaven, too."
"About heaven, too."
She leaned back into me, and her whole small body went heavy.
Across the room, Matthew was already on the phone.
At three that afternoon, I stood on the front walk of my own house in Greenwich.
White clapboard. Black shutters. The hydrangeas I'd planted the spring Flora was born, cut back to sticks for winter.
The detective stood beside me with a search warrant.
Two troopers stood behind him.
Matthew waited by the car with his arms folded.
The detective had told him civilians stayed outside, and he'd said, "Fine," in a voice that meant it wasn't.
"You don't have to go in," the detective said.
"It's my house."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Room 14's Secret: The Heiress Who Outsmarted Her Betrayers are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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