Page 1 of The Bad Husband

1

LILA

“The house looks like a mausoleum,” I murmur, lips pressed to my phone, my cell tucked between my cheek and my shoulder, my head tilted to the side as I do my best to keep my voice low while staring out the window at the road snaking through the large southern estate.

Clusters of trees––Southern Magnolia, Live Oak, Bald Cypress, and occasionally Red Maple guard the beautifully manicured landscape.

I knew he was rich, but that rich?

She hit the jackpot with this one. Or should I say she hit the jackpot again after inheriting a good chunk of my late father’s money. Money she hasn’t collected yet.

The driver largely ignores my conversation with Keira, my best friend, keeping his eyes pinned on the road.

My friend and I have been on the phone for the past thirty minutes. Not once have I not bitched about my new life and the strain the clause in my father’s will has put on me.

“It’s like a pharaonic tomb,” I drone on with casual humor, making my best friend giggle at the other end of the line.

“You’re nuts.”

She coughs and laughs, choking.

“You’ll see for yourself,” I say, unamused this time.

“I won’t visit you at their place. I can’t stand Henrietta.”

“Can’t blame you. Who can stand that hairy rat?”

I laugh quietly.

“Her new husband, obviously,” she replies. “Is she still upset about your not attending the wedding?”

“She doesn’t care. She just wants to make sure we adhere by the silly conditions stipulated in my father’s will, which luckily doesn’t mention anything about me going to her wedding. Poor guy. It didn’t even cross his mind that she’d get married so soon after his death. Had he thought about that, he would’ve asked his lawyer to redraw his will.”

Sighing, I ponder, yet again, how we all got here.

Henrietta ‘the closeted gold digger’ Jones and now Jones-West has been bad news since she ran into my father in one of his casinos a few years back.

God blessed his soul. He was the kind of guy who genuinely believed that a woman who squeezed herself into a crimson dress to show off her round-and-firm-like-cantaloupes breasts and a narrow waist that could only be accomplished with the surgical removal of a few ribs could only find solace after a nasty breakup in one of his casinos.

Nothing clued him in.

Not the way she batted her eyelashes at him and played a damsel in distress with big teary eyes, a mane of shiny dark hair, and legs up to her chin.

Now I know why my late mother had warned me about him having a weakness for this type of woman.

I never wanted to believe her.

My parents started out as teachers. They were hard-working people, law-abiding citizens, and good parents.

They had me a little late in life after saving up a little bit of money to offer me a decent life.

I was barely a teen when my father unexpectedly inherited a nice sum of money from his parents, who both perished in a car accident.

With that came the advice of a friend who compelled him to get into the casino business with him.

My father may have been good with numbers since he was an excellent math teacher, but he knew little about working with people.

He and his friend ran their enterprise successfully for a while, making a ton of money, which in turn made me some type of heiress, I suppose. No one had thought about that, though, before my family ran out.