Page 96 of What the Wife Knew

Unbelievable... but not really. Even as the foundation crumbled beneath her, Kathryn’s first allegiance was to recouping all she’d lost.

I refused to be derailed until I played my theory out to the end. “You and Richmond dated during college. You were always around him. In his circle. You knew what he did back then and you lived with it all these years.”

“Wait a minute.” Wyatt held up both hands. He looked like he wanted to stop the conversation zipping around him. Catch the horrible facts and pull them back for examination.

“She’s vile.” Old Kathryn had returned.

Forget the blood on her dress and my mother lying in the other room. Kathryn held court in the middle of Richmond’s office. I tucked the bat closer to my leg just in case. “When I confronted Richmond with the evidence of what he did to his family, he ran to you. You both risked exposure if I wasn’t handled.”

“Mom?”

I vowed to talk until Wyatt believed me. “That’s why you agreed to the quick divorce and settlement. You knew the evidence I had could implicate you. You couldn’t afford that.”

Kathryn rubbed Wyatt’s shoulder probably the same way she’d been doing since he fell down as a toddler. “I was appalled by the affair and insisted on a divorce. I never dreamed Richmond would fail to get the life insurance he promised and put me in financial peril.”

This woman held on to the fantasy of a happy marriage despite the barrage of evidence to the contrary. She was the only one in the room who believed in her vision. “He betrayed you. Over and over again and you never left him.”

“Richmond humiliated me. He should never have done that.”

The truth. Finally. “Because you had a deal, and that deal was held together by a secret so devastating it would destroy everything. You never thought he’d back out. You had leverage because you were the one person who could unmask him. Until I came along.”

“Unlike yours, my marriage was real.”

She had some fight left in her. Impressive, but her need to be the victim poked at me. She was not innocent in all of this. Richmond would have cut her loose long ago if she had been. She stayed by his side because he needed to have her there to watch over her and control what she said.

“You thought his fear of you squealing would bind him to you. Through the lies and the affairs, you had him caught and he could not leave you.” Nothing else made sense. That had to be what happened.

Kathryn stood there with her hands fisted at her sides. Her gaze traveled to the bat then around the room before landing on me again. Her mouth pulled tight in the silence. “I should have waited and used that bat you kept beside the bed on you.”

The whoosh of relief hit me that time. The truth. Sick and twisted and right in front of me all along. “But you did use it.”

“Yes.”

The last stubborn piece solved. The force of it stole my breath.

Kathryn was at the bottom of all of this. “You’re the one who killed Richmond.”

Chapter Sixty-Three

Her

Present Day

Kathryn stood perfectly still until the second she didn’t. She lunged for the desk next to me. Skipped the lamp and whatever else might have worked as a weapon. Knocked over a cup of pens and snatched the scissors.

“Mom! What the hell?” Wyatt jumped back, slamming into the bookcase with enough force to make it shake against the wall.

It’s not a knife. Repeating the sentence didn’t ease the panic running through me. Anything but a blade. The sight of it paralyzed me. I could feel my body and brain shut down.

The edge of the scissors flashed as it caught the light. Kathryn held them in her fist with the pointed end visible and her expression fierce. She flicked the blade around in the air. Taunting me. She couldn’t know my fear or how anxiety flooded through every vein at the thought of the end slicing through my skin.

Only Mom knew what I’d done and she’d used that self-defense murder as fodder to make me dance at her command. She’d never tell Kathryn, but somehow Kathryn picked the weapon of my nightmares.

She didn’t make a sound when she launched her strike. Shetook racing steps toward me right as Wyatt pushed away from the bookcase. Their bodies slammed together only a few feet in front of me. Wyatt’s block stopped Kathryn’s momentum. She stumbled to the side, losing ground. Her thigh jammed against the corner of the desk. The haze never left her eyes.

Wyatt doubled over.

The air in the room stilled and walls seemed to close in around us, trapping us in a tight, suffocating space. Only seconds had passed during the shift from silence to the crescendo of harsh breaths and rustling clothing. My reaction was a beat too slow. I raised the bat but hadn’t set my grip. I didn’t know where to look—at Wyatt to make sure he was okay or at Kathryn to be on guard.

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