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“Do you—”
“Shit.” Penny glanced down, resting a hand on her swollen belly. “I think that was a contraction.”
The detective’s head shot up so hard, Penny heard his neck crack. He stared at her, alarmed. “Should I call someone?”
Penny crunched forward, gripping the table until her knuckles turned a ghastly white. “I think I’m going into labor.”
“Let me drive you to the hospital.”
“I can drive myself, thanks.”
“Ms. Sands…” The detective stood, made his way around the table, and helped Penny from her chair. “I have one last question for you. Is Mr. Tate the father of your child?”
Penny pulled her arm from the detective’s grasp. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean,” Penny said, her voice pinched and tight, “I had sex with more than one man during my fertile window. I don’t know that I can spell it out any more clearly.”
“I’ll need the name—”
Penny cut him off with a groan. “It doesn’t matter who the father is. This baby is mine—end of story. Now, Detective, I really need to get to the hospital.”
“I’ll call you an ambulance. It’s too dangerous for you to drive yourself.”
The second the cop left her side, Penny helped herself right out of the room. She didn’t look behind her as she exited the building and made her way to her car before the detective could return.
As Penny drove, she turned on the radio and hummed along. Whether the baby belonged to Ryan or Roman was irrelevant. Both were out of her life for good. Roman a little more permanently than Ryan.
Instead of heading to the hospital, Penny cruised home, parked the beat-up car that had been serving her well for the last few months at an expired meter in front of her apartment. She let herself inside, dropped her purse on the couch, and went to the cupboards. There, she found a stack of saltines and a jar of Nutella. She grabbed a butter knife and returned, taking a seat next to her purse.
Kicking her feet onto the lopsided coffee table, she balanced the jar of Nutella on her stomach. She thought back to her interview with the detective in an attempt to straighten everything out in her head. Roman wasn’t the only person who could lie. Penny lied too.
She’d lied about her contractions, for starters. She wasn’t in labor—not even close. She wasn’t due for another month. The baby had been conceived in August, not July. She’d just wanted an excuse to end the interview early.
As she flicked the television on to an old season of Survivor, she casually chomped through a line of saltines, watching as a group of pretty people duked it out in bathing suits for the chance at a million dollars. I could use a million dollars, Penny thought lazily. And she could lie, cheat, and steal her way to the top if that was what it took.
After all, Penny had gotten very good at lying these last few months. She’d lied to her friends. She’d lied to Roman. She’d lied to her mother and to herself and to the detective at the station. There were so many lies surrounding Roman’s murder, it was a wonder the detectives had been able to pin any sort of evidence on Eliza.
Which was the biggest problem of all. Penny suspected Eliza hadn’t killed her husband.
So why had she been arrested for a crime she hadn’t committed?
THIRTY-SEVEN
Two Months After
April 2019
Anne slipped a pair of sunglasses over her eyes and leaned against the exterior of her van, watching the youth softball game from the parking lot. As the two teams crossed paths at the switch of an inning, she let her gaze wander to the other end of the lot where Mark’s car was parked. Anne had gotten quite good at avoiding her almost ex-husband in public.
Mark hadn’t yet signed the papers, despite them being in his hands for several weeks. Anne’s phone was loaded with messages from him. In them, he begged her to talk, to listen, to give him another chance. Anne hadn’t been ready to talk. She still wasn’t. What could she say?
She hadn’t told her husband about the private investigator or Roman’s blackmail. Mark thought the divorce was because of the affair. It wasn’t, but there was no point in telling him that when the result was the same. Especially because Anne wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answers to the outstanding questions swimming around her head—questions like where he’d been on the night of Roman’s death.
Anne had other things to keep her busy now—her four children, for instance. Or finding a job that could pay for her new lifestyle as a single mom. Or the fact that her best friend, Eliza Tate, had just been arrested for murder.
Thankfully, Anne’s mother had agreed to help in the interim. Beatrice Harper was currently at home watching the three youngest kids while Anne forced herself to sit through Gretchen’s game—not one hundred feet from her husband.
