Page 27 of The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie
“Well, you were wrong.” He rises to his feet and starts moving toward me. I take a step back, wondering if I could make a run for it. “Now, I want you to put on this dress.”
“No,” I squeak out. “I won’t do it.”
“You will do it!” he snaps. “And now that you’re having my child, there are going to be some changes around here. First of all, I’m going to order you this dress in maternity sizes. Perhaps a pair of matching pants with an adjustable waistband.”
“No!” I cry. “I won’t wear it!”
“You will, though.” He continues to move toward me as I back away. “You will do whatever I tell you to do.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’m going to tell the police that you’re the one responsible for my brother’s accident. You’ll go to jail for the rest of your life.” He winks at me. “I already tipped off Detective Mancini.”
Grant was the one who tipped off Mancini that the brakes in the car had been cut. I should have guessed.
He tilts his head thoughtfully. “Or perhaps I’ll do the kinder thing and end your pathetic little life.”
“No…” I take another step back and stumble against the wall. There is nowhere else to go. He has quite literally backed me into a corner. “You wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t really kill someone.”
“Maybe I would…” He holds each end of the blue-and-black dress in his fists so that the fabric forms the shape of a rope. “After all, I did it once. Nobody ever suspected that Rebertha’s drowning at sea wasn’t just a tragic accident.”
I gasp. Grant killed his first wife too? I am stunned. When he told me about how they sailed out to the middle of the sea on his private yacht on the night of their third wedding anniversary and she slipped and fell off the deck with no witnesses, leaving him her vast fortune, it sounded so innocent.
“I can go to Marnie,” he continues, “and tell her the real Grant is dead, and I can take over my brother’s life. And with you out of the picture, Brant will be the next of kin and inherit allmy money.” He smiles proudly. “We will never have to listen to Nickelback again.”
Tears well in my eyes, threatening to spill over. “You’re a monster.”
His eyes twinkle under the skylights. “Am I?”
“You’re going to go to hell…”
He grins at me. “I’ll see you there, then, won’t I?”
I can’t stop him. He’s coming toward me with the blue-and-black dress fashioned into a noose. I imagine him wrapping it around my neck, squeezing and squeezing…
“Just think, Alice,” he says. “Soon your face will be blue. And when they put you in the ground, it will turn black.”
I squirm against the wall, wondering if I can make a run for it, but I don’t think I can. Grant is too close, and if I make any sudden moves, he will pounce. He’s been planning this moment from the day we saw that striped dress on his computer screen. Soon, it will all be over. And nobody will ever suspect that Grant killed me, because as far as anyone knows, he is dead.
I place a hand on my belly.I’m so sorry, little baby. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you from this monster.
Grant reaches out with the fabric of the dress taut between his fists, moving toward my neck, but before he can get there, a loud thump echoes through the room. And just like that, Grant goes limp and drops to the ground, unconscious.
I look up, confused. And when I see who is standing in front of me, my mouth drops open.
It’s Poppy. And she’s holding a shovel.
27
What?
I am so confused. I went to Poppy’s house earlier today, and I discovered that she doesn’t exist, yet she somehow just saved my life. How is that possible?
“I was just about to knock on the front door, but then I heard shouting coming from inside,” she tells me, brushing aside a strand of hair that has come loose from her messy bun. “So I grabbed a shovel that I found in your front yard and came in through the back.” She looks down at Grant, lying unconscious on the floor. “Good thing I did.”
I look from the shovel in Poppy’s hands to my unconscious husband. “But… how did you do that?”
Poppy rests the shovel against the wall. “Do what?”
