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CHAPTER 86: THE CONVERSATION CONT’D

Penulis: Kehinde Rachael
last update Tanggal publikasi: 2026-07-04 04:45:43

The study door at the end of the corridor.

“What do you think happens,” I said. “On the other side of all of this. The arrest, my mother knowing, the news coverage, the.” I stopped. “What do you think happens.”

Marcus was quiet for a long time.

The real pause, the thinking pause, the Marcus underneath the performance taking the question seriously.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that the house is going to go through something in the next few weeks that will either break it or clarify it.” He looked
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  • HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND   CHAPTER 86: THE CONVERSATION CONT’D

    The study door at the end of the corridor.“What do you think happens,” I said. “On the other side of all of this. The arrest, my mother knowing, the news coverage, the.” I stopped. “What do you think happens.”Marcus was quiet for a long time.The real pause, the thinking pause, the Marcus underneath the performance taking the question seriously.“I think,” he said slowly, “that the house is going to go through something in the next few weeks that will either break it or clarify it.” He looked at his cup. “And I think the clarification version is available. But it requires everyone in the house to be honest about what they want in a way that is going to cost each of them something significant.”I looked at the window.“My mother,” I said.“She loves him,” Marcus said. “In the way she loves him, which is real and is also.” He paused. “Not the primary love of her life. I think she knows that. I think she’s known it for a while and has chosen not to look at it directly.”I thought about

  • HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND   CHAPTER 85: THE CONVERSATION

    BELLA’S POVI left the study at two.Not because I wanted to. Because my mother’s footsteps had been in the corridor twice in the twenty minutes since Dominic’s hand had closed around mine and the second time they had paused outside the study door and then moved away and I understood the pausing.I stood up.He looked at me.I looked at our hands, still joined on the desk, and I looked at him and I did the thing that cost the most, which was let go.I stood.“She’s ready,” I said.He looked at the desk where our hands had been.“Yes,” he said.I went to the door.At the threshold I stopped because everyone in this house stopped at thresholds and I had been in it long enough to have absorbed the habit.“Dominic,” I said.“Yes,” he said.“Tell her everything,” I said. “The full version. She’s stronger than you think.”He looked at me.“I know how strong she is,” he said.I went through the door.My mother was in the sitting room.She had changed since the morning — not dramatically, the

  • HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND   CHAPTER 84: MONDAY CONT’D

    The quality of the silence that followed — not the library silence or the dinner table silence or the kitchen silence. The silence of a room that has just received too much at once, that is attempting to process simultaneous impacts, that needs a moment before it can do anything with what it has been given.“Bella,” she said.Her voice had changed.Not the flat emptied voice. The other one, the older one, the voice of my mother when she was frightened.“I know,” I said.“You were with him,” she said. “For eighteen months. While he—”“I didn’t know,” I said. “Mum. I didn’t know. I had no idea. If I had known—”“I know you didn’t know,” she said. Quickly. The quick clarification of a woman who was frightened and grieving and putting things in the right order with the discipline she always used when the alternative was falling apart. “I know that.”I looked at my hands.“Are you all right?” she said.I looked up.She was asking me. In the middle of receiving news about her husband’s deat

  • HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND   CHAPTER 83: MONDAY

    BELLA’S POVI was awake at five.Not the gradual wakefulness of recent days. The immediate kind, the eyes-open-and-already-knowing kind, the body having apparently decided that today required no transition between sleep and full consciousness.Monday.I lay in the dark for exactly four minutes.Then I got up.Dominic was in the study.I knew this without going to check — the line of light under the door visible from the corridor, the study occupied at five in the morning, the quality of a man who had also not transitioned gently into the day. I stood in the corridor for a moment and looked at the line of light.I did not knock.I went to the kitchen.I made coffee.I sat at the kitchen table and I thought about Reeves.He had said morning. He had said he’d call when it was done. He had said the police would need to move quickly once they had the file because the window between filing and Daniel finding out was not a large one.I thought about Daniel in his flat.The dark blue Volvo. T

  • HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND   CHAPTER 82: THE DAY BEFORE CONT’D

    He was looking at the bloom and his face was the morning face and the October light was the October light and we were crouching at the edge of the east bed on a Sunday morning one day before Monday with the house behind us and the fragile certain bloom in front of us.“Dominic,” I said.He looked at me.The close range.No table.No architecture.Just the bed and the bloom and the October morning.“After Monday,” I said. “After my mother knows about my father. After the police and Reeves and Daniel and all of it.” I kept my eyes on his. “What happens to us.”The question.Not the storage unit question — that had been the hypothetical, the if my mother wasn’t in the picture. This was the actual question. The real conditions, the real picture, all of it in place.What happens to us.He looked at the bloom.He was quiet for a long time.The garden around us. The fountain. The Sunday morning.“I don’t know,” he said.The honest answer. The same honest answer as the car — not the reassuran

  • HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND   CHAPTER 81: THE DAY BEFORE

    BELLA’S POVDaniel replied at seven in the morning.I was still in bed, the specific Sunday morning wakefulness that had been arriving earlier every day this week, the body refusing to stay unconscious when there was this much happening in it. The phone lit up on the pillow beside me and I looked at it in the grey early light.Thank you. Where and when.Four words. The fear still in them but underneath the fear something else now — relief. The relief of a person who had been waiting for a response and had received one and could now move toward whatever they had decided they needed to do.I looked at the message.I did not reply.Not yet. Reeves had said Monday. Dominic had said don’t meet him alone. I had sent soon to keep Daniel contained, to stop the escalating messages, to give him enough to hold onto through the weekend without giving him anything real.It had worked.He was contained.I locked the phone and put it face down and looked at the ceiling.Sunday.The last day before M

  • HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND   CHAPTER 4 : MY MUM HUSBAND IS DRIVING ME CRAZY

    I looked at my phone. It was Jennifer, my friend. But Jennifer wasn't hearing me, in fact, the call kept cutting out. Neither of us could hear each other properly.The call ended.I dropped the phone in frustration and headed to the bathroom to take a bath.The bathroom was absolutely gorgeous. Mar

  • HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND   CHAPTER 3 : THE FORBIDDEN FEELING

    BELLA’S POV For a second, neither of us moved. He just stood there, holding my underwear, his dark eyes locked on mine.I snatched it from his hand and shoved it behind my back. "I, I'm sorry. My bad.""I'm just going to take this and leave," he said, his voice tight. He grabbed whatever he'd been

  • HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND   CHAPTER 2 : THE MOST TEMPTING MOMENT

    BELLA’S POVHis hands were still on my waist. His breath was warm against my neck.And for one insane, terrifying second, I wondered what it would feel like if he didn't let go.I forced myself to sit up straighter, pulling away from him."Sorry," I mumbled.He didn't respond.The car kept moving.

  • 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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