Page 73 of The Next Mrs. Parrish

“Just stay hidden until you get my message. I’ll save it as a draft in the Gmail account. The burner is already logged into the account. Just don’t send anything from it. Remember to save any message as an email in the draft folder,” Meredith says.

I shake my head. “I feel like I’m in an espionage movie. How do you know all this?”

“I had help.”

She returns to her car and the girls come out. Bella runs to me and hugs me; Tallulah just stares.

“Come on,” I say. They follow me to the car, and we get in. Bella, used to being relegated to the back, automatically gets in behind the driver’s side. I’m surprised when Tallulah gets in next to her, but I say nothing.

“Buckle up.”

We pull out of the parking lot, and I blow out a pent-up breath.

“I’m so sorry for all this,” I start.

“Aunt Meredith said that Dad drugged your drink and lied to the police,” Bella says. “Why did he do that?”

“It’s a very long story and one that I had hoped not to tell either of you for a long time. Your father is a sick man. I should have never brought you back here, but—”

“I made you,” Tallulah says, her voice strained. “It’s all my fault. If I had listened to you, none of this would have happened but I believed her.” She’s crying now.

“It’s not your fault, honey. Believed who?”

“Amber. When I got in touch last year so I could call Dad in prison, she told me that you were angry at him for leaving you and that you’d made him out to be a bad person. She said that you and Dad had been unhappy for a long time but that you still couldn’t forgive him for leaving you, so you took us away. I’m sorry, Mom. I should never have listened to her.”

I bite back my anger at Amber and focus on my daughter. “I want you to listen to me, Tallulah. None of this is your fault. Amber is a good liar, she’s as sick as your father, and trust me, she fools most people. For a while, she fooled me too. It’s only natural that you would want a relationship with your father, and you had no way of knowing the truth about him because I protected you from that. The important thing is that we’re getting away from him, and I’m going to prove what he did.”

“You tried to tell me. But I wouldn’t listen.”

“Sweetie, please. I know you think you’re all grown up, but you’re still a child. It’s not your fault. Please believe that.”

“What if they take us away from you and we have to live with him?” Bella asks.

My hand tightens on the steering wheel. “I will never let that happen. We have to get far away from here now, and people are working to help us. You have to trust me. We’ll be driving all night. No one will be looking for us until tomorrow so we’ll get a good lead, but then there will be a lot of people with our pictures searching for us.”

“I’m scared,” Bella says.

“I know, baby, I know. But it’s going to be okay. I promise.”

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

Tallulah’s voice is small. “Did he abuse you?”

I sigh. “He was abusive, yes. He didn’t beat me up, but he was abusive in other ways.”

“Why did you marry him?” she asks.

“I didn’t know until it was too late. I thought he was wonderful at first. He swept me off my feet. He charmed my family, made me feel like the most special person in the world. By the time he showed his true colors, I couldn’t get away.” I think about how to frame the rest of it. Tallulah already feels responsible for our situation; if I tell her that the reason I came back was to protect her, it will destroy her. I need to give them a version of the truth that helps them understand why I couldn’t leave but doesn’t place any burden on them. “Girls, listen. I still think this is too much for you to hear right now. It’s enough that you understand that I did what I had to do until I was finally able to get away from him. We can talk more about everything together with Dr. Marshall once we’re back home. All you need to know is that I love you with every fiber of my being and I promise I will do everything in my power to make sure you are both safe and out of his reach forever.” I only hope it’s a promise I can keep.

– 45 –

AMBER

Amber had barely slept all night, and this morning her excitement was so high she thought she might burst. Everything was coming together. Amber now had 55 percent of the shares of White Orchid in her possession. She’d paid four and a half million dollars for Daisy Ann’s 25 percent and six million for Wade’s shares, but today Valene Mart would buy them all from her for eighteen million. A profit of seven and a half million dollars. Not bad for a day’s work. Unfortunately, she’d have to split some of that with Jackson. But with the five million she still had in the offshore account and the cash in the safe-deposit box, she’d wind up with almost ten million all to herself. If Jackson thought he was going to get any of the money she had put in those bank accounts, he was sadly mistaken. Plus, she still had three of those precious little pink gems stashed at the house in case of emergency.

Still lying in bed, she hugged herself with glee, picturing the sun-drenched skies and cerulean seas of the Maldives that she’d seen in a travel magazine. Paris would have to wait. She was in some serious need of some relaxing days on a beach. What a glorious place to take a luxurious time-out and decide what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She would be finally and fully free. No encumbrances, nothing to keep her from seeing the world and enjoying all the finer things in life. It’s what she wanted and what she deserved. She was smart and she’d turn that money into much more, until she was rich, rich, rich. And then she would dosomething that would make her famous and adored. She could probably find a way to use her money to get the charges back home dropped and then she would no longer have to hide from the world. She’d cruise the Nile, explore India from the Taj Mahal to its Mughal splendor, spend weeks at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Uffizi in Florence, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, read Rousseau and Voltaire and Zola in the original French. And then, she would hold court with the literati and wealthy who would all vie to spend time with the brilliant and beautiful American at her fabulous Paris abode. Throwing the covers back, she slipped out of bed to shower and dress.

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