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CHAPTER 110: THE SOURCE CONT’D
publish date:
2026-07-17 05:33:41
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HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 116: TWO WEEKS CONT’D
“My name is going to be in things,” I said. “His stepdaughter. The girl. Thomas Morgan’s daughter at the estate with the investigation.”“Yes,” he said.“And now this,” I said. “If someone publishes the photo.”“It may not be published,” he said. “It may be nothing.”“But if it is,” I said.He was quiet.“If it is,” he said, “then we handle it.”We.The specific word.I held his hand on the embankment and I thought about handling things and what that meant and whether I was ready for the lot of it.I looked at him.“We,” I said.“Yes,” he said.I looked at the river.“All right,” I said.We walked back along the embankment.We drove home.The estate received us with its usual quality — the gate, the drive, the house, the fountain — and I thought about the embankment and the photograph and the we and I thought about eleven weeks of the house and the concentrated atmosphere and the tested feeling.Not the house.Still not the house.The second week had a different texture.My mother had
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 115: TWO WEEKS
BELLA’S POVThe two weeks before the hearing moved differently from every other two weeks I had spent in the house.Not slowly. Not the suspended quality of the thirty-six hours or the charged quality of the birthday week. These two weeks had momentum — the sense of something moving toward its conclusion, the legal machinery grinding forward with the specific patience of a process that had been set in motion and was not going to stop.Reeves called every other day.The updates were technical and precise — the challenge to the evidence was being heard, the procedural arguments made, Raines’s legal team doing what Raines’s legal team did. Reeves countered each move with the flat professional certainty of a man who had been building this case for two years and was not going to watch it dismantled by expensive lawyers on a technicality.My statement stood.Harry’s testimony was admitted.The witness from Prentiss Road gave her account in a formal deposition that Reeves described as flawle
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 114: THE STATEMENT CONT’D
For more than a year of our relationship, Daniel Carr had known that the man in the accident was my father and had stayed in my life and had looked me in the face and had said nothing.The sustained deception.Not only the cheating.The other thing.The larger, older, more devastating thing.I kept my face even.The statement room had taken forty-seven minutes and I had used the voice that did not waver and I was going to continue using it.“When did he tell you that he knew who I was?” I said.Harry looked at his coffee.“About eight months in,” he said. “To your relationship. He came home one night and he’d been drinking and he told me.” Harry paused. “I told him he needed to end it. I told him he couldn’t keep—” He stopped. “He said he couldn’t end it.”“Why?” I said.Harry looked at me.“Because he’d convinced himself it wasn’t what it was,” Harry said. “That it was an accident, that his uncle was driving, that he hadn’t done anything wrong. That staying with you was—” He stopped.
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 113: THE STATEMENT
BELLA’S POVI dressed carefully on Tuesday morning.Not the silk blouse. Not the performance of a wardrobe choice weighted with meaning. The dark navy shirt I had brought from before this house, the one that fit the way things fit when they knew you, the one that said: this is a person who knows what she’s doing here.I looked in the mirror.Twenty years old.Thomas Morgan’s daughter.I went downstairs.Dominic was at the kitchen counter with coffee and the contained energy of a man who had somewhere to be and was ready for it. He looked at me when I came through and the look had the quality I was still adjusting to — the open version, the one without the managed architecture around it.“Ready?” he said.“Yes,” I said.My mother came through from the corridor in the good coat, the interview coat.I looked at her.“I’m coming,” she said.I stared at her.“To Reeves,” she said. “I’m coming.”“Mum—”“Thomas was my husband,” she said. The flat certain delivery. “I am coming.”I looked at
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 112: HARRY CONT’D
Not Harry-slash-Darren — Harry, who had been Daniel’s flatmate and my occasional antagonist and the person who had known about the cheating before I did and had said nothing.Harry, who I had not spoken to in six months.“Yeah,” he said. The specific Harry vocal quality, the casual register of someone performing ease they didn’t feel.“How did you get this number?” I said.“Daniel had it in his phone,” he said. “Before.” He paused. “The police have his phone now so.”I stopped making lunch.“Why are you calling me?” I said.A long pause.“I know some things,” he said. “About Daniel. About what happened. About—” He stopped. “I’ve been sitting on it and I can’t sit on it anymore.”I leaned against the kitchen counter.“What things?” I said.“Not on the phone,” he said. “I need to tell you in person.”The kitchen.The October afternoon.I thought about Dominic saying don’t meet him alone before Monday. But Monday had passed. Garrett was in custody. Daniel was in custody. The landscape ha
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 111: HARRY
BELLA’S POVJennifer left Monday morning.She stood at the front door with her bag and the overnight case and the empty champagne bottle she was apparently taking home as a trophy, and she looked at me with the full attention she had been directing at this house and everyone in it since Saturday noon.“I’ve been processing,” she said. “Since the birthday dinner. The speech. The table. All of it.”“And?” I said.“I have thoughts,” she said.“Tell me on the phone,” I said.“There are too many thoughts for the phone,” she said. “I need at least a coffee and a table.”“Soon,” I said.She looked at me.She looked past me into the entrance hall, where Dominic was at the study door with a document, and she looked back at me with the Jennifer look — the one that catalogued everything and stored it and would produce it back at a moment of her choosing.“He looks at you differently now,” she said quietly.“I know,” I said.“Not the almost-look,” she said. “The actual look.”“I know,” I said.“I
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 51: LUNCH CONT’D
He had not spoken much.This was the thing I had been peripherally noting through the whole meal — the quality of his silence, which was not the comfortable silence of a man in his own house at his own table, not the quiet of someone who had spoken and was resting from it. A different quiet. The qu
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 50: LUNCH
BELLA’S POVPetra set the table for three.She did it without being asked — came through from the kitchen at twelve-forty with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had noted the configuration of the morning and had drawn the correct domestic conclusion from it, and set the dining table in the Sunday
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 47: THE EAST BEDS CONT’D
The space beyond the yew was — I stopped.Not the garden I had been looking at from the window. Not the formal beds, the fountain, the well-maintained structure of a professional garden. A different thing. Smaller, enclosed on three sides by the yew hedge, the fourth side open to the meadow grass t
HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND CHAPTER 1: MY MOTHER’S NEW HUSBAND
The front door slammed open with such force that the walls shook.I looked up from my laptop, heart hammering, as my mother stumbled inside like something was chasing her. Her eyes were wild, her chest heaving, her designer handbag, when did she get a designer handbag?—hanging crooked from her shou
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