Page 47 of Dirty Rotten Cheating Husband

When we arrived home with the takeaway Indian food, there was somebody standing on the lawn waiting for us.

It was my recently paroled father Harvey Adler.

CHAPTER 18

Grayson

Clementine’s felon father Harvey jabbed his fork into my panang curry, spearing the biggest piece of chicken for himself.

Clementine was looking mockingly at me.

“You know, you don’t have to stay here, Grayson,” she said innocently. “Don’t feel obliged to stay on my account. You can take a night off.”

“Nope,” I said, “I’m fine.”

My former father-in-law eye me sourly.

Our first meeting had not gone very smoothly.

When we parked I recognized him immediately. The con man I’d spent over two years trying to put into prison was in his early 60s, only a few inches taller than Clementine, with wild white hair and a droopy long moustache. Despite his lack of inches, he had a big, perhaps oversize, personality.

“Oh, Dad!” Clementine squealed, racing from the car to embrace him.

I followed behind, scanning the street and nearby bushes. Harvey Adler wasn’t dangerous, but he had run with some dangerous people, and I didn’t want them anywhere around Clementine.

“Hi, sweet pea,” he said, embracing her.

Then he fell back dramatically when he saw me walk up with the takeaway food.

“My dear child, you told me you were no longer with this snitch!” he demanded indignantly.

“I’m not with him,” Clementine said impatiently. “He’s just sleeping on the couch for a few weeks.”

“Honey, I thought I taught you better than that,” Harvey said. “I taught you to stay out of low company, and there’s nothing lower than a man who eats your food and bread and marries your daughter and then turns you into the FBI.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “for any inconvenience you experienced. I was. . . very zealous.”

Harvey glared at me as we went inside.

“I have some very important things to say to you,” he told Clementine, eyeing me with distrust. “But I can’t with this ogre lurking about.”

“You can talk in front of him,” Clementine said serenely. “Maybe that’ll scare him away.”

But Harvey seemed reluctant to, which made me very nervous.

What did he have up his sleeve?

“What’s up with you, dear child?” he asked.

“Oh, just thinking about talking with a journalist. . . there’s someone who wants to do a story on us,” she said casually, as if daring me to object.

But I was more convinced than ever that Clementine had a right to tell her story, should tell her story if she wanted, no matter what it meant for me.

“Clementine, I want you to talk to that journalist,” I said.

“Why? You could get in trouble.”

“I don’t care. You deserve to be able to tell the truth about what happened. I will make sure you are able to tell it.”

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