My Darling Husband

by Kimberly Belle

  Praise for the novels of Kimberly Belle

  “Absolutely superb. Kimberly Belle is the queen of domestic suspense, and Stranger in the Lake is her darkest, most hypnotic work to date.”

  —Cristina Alger, New York Times bestselling author of Girls Like Us

  “Stranger in the Lake is a spellbinding tale of lies and deceit that unfolds piece by devastating piece. Another outstanding novel by Kimberly Belle, masterfully written to lure you in and never let go.”

  —Samantha Downing, USA TODAY bestselling author of My Lovely Wife and He Started It

  “Clear your calendar because once you’ve started Kimberly Belle’s utterly engrossing Stranger in the Lake, you won’t be able to tear yourself away! Old and new secrets abound in this tense and atmospheric thriller that will make you question how well we can really know anyone, and how much we might be willing to forgive for those we consider family.”

  —Kathleen Barber, author of Follow Me

  “Belle’s latest is another riveting, superbly written, didn’t-see-that-coming thriller that will keep you up way past your bedtime.… Tension build[s] on every page.”

  —Kate White, New York Times bestselling author of Have You Seen Me?

  “Belle explores the shocking depths people will go to keep their secrets buried in her latest slow-burn thriller Stranger in the Lake before building to an explosive and unexpected finale. A must-read!”

  —Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Mrs.

  Also by Kimberly Belle

  The Last Breath

  The Ones We Trust

  The Marriage Lie

  Three Days Missing

  Dear Wife

  Stranger in the Lake

  My Darling Husband

  Kimberly Belle

  To Frans and Saskia, with love.

  Hopefully one day soon you’ll be reading this book in Dutch.

  Kimberly Belle is the USA TODAY and internationally bestselling author of seven novels. She’s sold rights to her books in a dozen languages as well as film and television options. A graduate of Agnes Scott College, Belle divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam.

  Contents

  The Interview

  Jade

  Jade

  Cam

  The Interview

  Jade

  Jade

  Sebastian

  Cam

  The Interview

  Jade

  Jade

  Cam

  The Interview

  Jade

  Sebastian

  Cam

  The Interview

  Jade

  Jade

  Cam

  The Interview

  Jade

  Jade

  Jade

  Jade

  Cam

  The Interview

  Jade

  Jade

  Sebastian

  Jade

  Cam

  The Interview

  Jade

  Jade

  Jade

  Cam

  The Interview

  Jade

  Jade

  Jade

  Jade

  Sebastian

  The Interview

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Stranger in the Lake by Kimberly Belle

  T H E I N T E R V I E W

  Juanita Moore: Mr. Lasky, thank you for speaking with me today, and sharing your story with Channel 7 Action News. I know rehashing what happened to your family can’t be easy for you to talk about.

  Cam Lasky: [squinting] Do you mind turning those lights down?

  Juanita: Those lights are necessary for our viewers to see your face, and people are clamoring to see you. You haven’t spoken to the media for months now, and for those of us who have been following your story, we are eager to hear it from your own lips, a firsthand account of what happened and how you’ve survived the months since. You’ve become quite the celebrity, though—

  Cam: I believe the proper term going around socials these days is celebrity asshole. Can I say that on TV—asshole? We’re not live, are we?

  Juanita: No, we’re not live. My editors will cut that one out, but if you wouldn’t mind keeping your answers PG, it will save them a lot of work later.

  Cam: [doesn’t respond]

  Juanita: As I was saying, the narratives that have come out since the home invasion haven’t exactly painted you as a hero of this story. You are the aggressor, the fraudster, the money-hungry villain.

  Cam: Too bad I don’t have a mustache or I’d twirl it.

  Juanita: Here are just a few of the stories circulating about you: that you’re involved in the mob, the head of a satanic cult, that your kitchens served as clandestine meeting spots for a ring of international child traffickers—

  Cam: Now, that last one’s just ridiculous. And absolutely untrue. They all are.

  Juanita: But still. Having all these unfavorable stories written about you must feel...

  Cam: Invasive. Intrusive. Annoying. People love to make stuff up, don’t they?

  Juanita: I meant the criticism.

  Cam: [shrugging] I’m used to it by now.

  Juanita: The BBC did a series on America’s biggest grifters and cited you as a classic example of an American businessman who will stop at nothing to succeed. Netflix is currently in talks to resurrect the show American Greed, with your story dominating their first three episodes. And a poll floating around Facebook last month declared you the most hated man in America behind Pharma Bro, Martin Shkreli.

  Cam: Well, since Facebook says it, it must be true.

  Juanita: And yet for months now, you have refused to talk to the media. Our many phone calls and emails and texts were left unanswered. You threatened legal action if my producer or I didn’t leave you alone.

  Cam: All true.

  Juanita: Until yesterday, when out of the blue you contacted me to request an interview. You were quite insistent, in fact. Why is that?

  Cam: Well, I guess I figured it was time to set the record straight.

  J A D E

  2:51 p.m.

  I’m pulling into the Westmore Music Academy lot when I spot him, the man leaning against the building’s brick and carved concrete sign. Pocked skin. Black-rimmed glasses. Skinny shoulders hunched against the rain. Atlanta is getting plowed with the tail of a tropical storm stalled over the gulf, blasting soupy heat all the way up to Tennessee, and he’s wearing that same cracked leather coat like it’s January and not early August, his hands shoved deep in the pockets as if for warmth.

  I gun it up the hill hard enough to make my tires squeal, tapping a button on the steering wheel. “Call Cam.”

  While the call connects, I glance in my side mirror, trying to pick him out of the trees and shrubs.

  The grocery store. The nail salon and yoga studio. Yesterday at Starbucks, he passed me a stevia packet before I could ask for one, which makes me wonder how many times he’s seen me there, stirring sweetener into my coconut latte.

  Cam’s deep voice booms through the car speakers. “I’m in the middle of something. Can I call you in thirty?”

  My husband always answers, even when he’s busy. Especially then. This is our steadfast rule ever since our oldest, Beatrix, took a spill on the playground when she was four, knocking herself out and breaking her arm in three places. Cam was in the middle of a renovation at the Inman Park restaurant at the time, covered in construction
dust and arguing with contractors whose every other word was over. Overdue, overworked, over budget. Thirty times I called him that day, frantic and bouncing in the back of an ambulance while comforting a scared child and trying to keep a fussy toddler on my lap. Cam didn’t feel his phone buzzing in his back pocket, didn’t notice the screen lighting up with a long line of increasingly desperate messages from me.

  The last one I left as they were wheeling Beatrix into Children’s Healthcare.

  “Your daughter is in the hospital, Cam. Maybe pick up your phone and call us sometime.”

  Mean and petty, I know, but I’ve never been so furious. Or so stressed. Or so downright petrified.

  Beatrix was fine. Cam and I, however, lost five years of our lives that day.

  Now I say to Cam, “He’s here.”

  “Who’s where?”

  “That guy. The skeevy one I told you about, with the glasses and the comb-over man bun. He’s here at Westmore.”

  “Well, maybe he has a musically gifted kid.”

  I roll my eyes, lift my hands from the steering wheel. “Right. And he just happens to go to the same gym as me and shops in the canned goods aisle at Whole Foods whenever I walk through their door.”

  In the back seat, Baxter leans as far forward as his booster seat will allow. “Hi, Daddy!”

  “Hey, buddy. You keeping your mom company?”

  Except for his fine mousy waves, our son is a spitting image of Cam. Baxter gives an enthusiastic nod. “She took me to Bruster’s, and then she made me get the frozen banana.”

  And he’s still salty about it, too, no matter how many times I explain that food coloring is bad for his six-year-old body, and the scoop of Purple Dinosaur he’s constantly begging for is more dye than ice cream. The banana dipped in dark chocolate is our hard-won compromise.

  I twist around on my seat and hold a finger to my lips, my next words for Cam: “Of course he doesn’t have a musically gifted kid. I’m telling you, Cam. This guy is following me. He is.”

  “Who is?” Baxter says, looking out the back window. “Who, Mommy?”

  I ignore him and check my mirrors, all of them, but the man is gone. The line of parked cars, the hill between here and the busy road, he’s nowhere. Even if I could see the sign from where I’m sitting, there are dozens of people on this stretch of street, pedestrians and runners, employees popping out for fresh air or to the nearby sandwich shops, people socializing on the covered benches. If he’s still down there, it would be easy to conceal himself in the crowd.

  And yet he made sure I saw him when I was turning into the lot, didn’t he? The way he was dressed in all black like some kind of daytime cat burglar, how his shoulders straightened and his head popped up when he spotted my car, how he stared at me through the windshield like he was daring me to see him. Like he wanted me to see him and be scared. Maybe that’s why he’s been following me for days.

  I gasp as something occurs to me. “Omigod, Cam. What if it’s not me he’s after, but the K-I-D-S? What if that’s why he’s been following me all over creation, because he’s trying to get to them?”

  “Why would he be after the kids?”

  I cringe at the way he said the word, already dreading the conversation I’m going to have to have with Baxter later. “I don’t know. For ransom. For creepy shadiness I don’t want to say out loud because you’re on speakerphone. Plus, I don’t want to give it energy.”

  “Saying the words...” Something clangs in the background, metal on heavy metal. Cam waits until the noise dies down. “Saying them out loud doesn’t bring something into existence, you know that as well as I do. And why would he be after the kids when there are a thousand other families in this city with fancier cars and bigger houses than ours? I mean, one look at our street and it’s clear there are plenty of bigger fish.”

  “Yeah, but it’s your face on the cover of Atlanta Magazine.” When Cam walks into a place, everything tilts. Heads turn, bodies shift, gazes stick. Going to a restaurant with Atlanta’s Steak King is like dining out with a rock star. The waitstaff, the chef, the other patrons in the restaurant—they all come over to bask in Cam’s glow.

  And Cam knows he’s visible, even without his chef’s gear. Thick black hair, a square jaw, straight white teeth he flashes often. My husband is handsome, but it’s the combination with his height that gets him noticed. Six and a half feet of big, Mediterranean man.

  “Go talk to the building’s security guard. That’s what he’s there for.”

  “And say what? That there was a strange man standing on the sidewalk? The road is public property.”

  “True, but I’m sure the guard would want to know if one of their clients is being stalked. At least give him a description of the creep.”

  I shiver, the reality of this conversation inching up the back of my neck. Maybe I’m wrong. Atlanta is a big city that can feel like a really small town. I run into people I know everywhere. Maybe this is all some strange coincidence.

  I rewind back to the first time I noticed him, a few days ago through the plate-glass window at Kale Me Crazy. There I was, seated alone at the bar with my phone and a smoothie I didn’t want, killing an empty hour between playdates and pickup times by scrolling through Pinterest. I was feeling sad and nostalgic for the offices and boutiques I used to design, back before I met Cam. This was before his name became synonymous with Atlanta’s high-end dining, before I came up with the sleek stone and metal look that would become a recognizable part of his brand, before I pushed out two babies in three years and closed up shop. But that day, I looked up and he was there, squinting into the sunshine and watching me.

  A weirdo, but a random one, I assumed—until I spotted him later at the dry cleaner, at the deli across from my yoga studio, at the Starbucks and the canned goods aisle of the grocery store.

  And now here he is again, today.

  At my child’s music school.

  My skin prickles with alarm.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing, but next time you see this guy, point your phone at his face and tell him you’re streaming live to Twitter. If it doesn’t scare him off, you’ll at least have a visual to show the guard.”

  His voice gets sucked up into more clanging, followed by a heavy crash and multiple voices, all of them shouting. I realize it’s been like this since the start, his voice pushing through loud and chaotic background noise.

  “Babe, why does it sound like you’re at fight club?”

  “I’m at the shop on Bolling Way. There was a fire.”

  My stomach drops at his words. Bolling Way is Cam’s signature restaurant, a booming scene surrounded by Buckhead’s finest stores, a place that’s packed from noon until midnight.

  “How bad was it?”

  “On a scale of one to ten? Four hundred and fifty-seven.” He sighs, and it occurs to me that the concern I thought I heard in his voice wasn’t for me and the kids, but disaster at his most profitable restaurant. A torched Buckhead kitchen means a big, giant hole in our income. “I’m here with Flavio. We’re talking through our options.”

  Flavio is the location’s general manager, and Cam’s highest paid employee.

  I’m opening my mouth to respond when I spot the clock on the dash: 3:01. A whole minute late, and to pick up a child who loses her shit at the tiniest adjustment to her daily schedule. “Oh crap, gotta go. Call me later.”

  I hang up, swipe my bag from the floor and Bax from the back seat, and race to the double glass doors of the building, looking over my shoulder the entire way.

  * * *

  I look for him after. Instead of turning left for home, I point my car right, steering past the spot where I saw him last, leaning against the sign. Four times I hold up traffic to search him out of the crowd, twice headed in the wrong direction, then two more times on the drive back past the building. I press my iPhone to the wind
ow and ride the brake the entire time, creeping by the entrance to the lot so slowly that more than one impatient driver honks.

  But he’s not there. The patch of trampled grass by the sign is empty. The man-bunned man is gone.

  Baxter pushes up in his booster seat, straining to see out the window. “Mommy, where are we going?”

  “We’re going home.” I’m headed in the right direction, but my hunt took too long. Now we’re stuck in traffic.

  “Then why do you keep turning around?”

  “And why are you going so slow?” Beatrix adds before I can explain. She swipes a wet finger down the back window, pointing at two women speed walking past us. “Are you sure we’re not going backward?”

  Beatrix knows we’re not going backward, but she enjoys being a smart-ass. Too clever for her nine years. Too sassy and energetic, too, and as tightly wound as the composite core strings on her DZ Strad violin—at least that’s according to her teachers.

  And as much as I love my daughter, they’re not wrong. Beatrix has been a handful since the second she came into this world, bloodred and hopping mad. Colic. Sleeping issues. Sinewy muscles that hated to be swaddled. My pediatrician called her a high-needs baby, patted me on the shoulder and promised me most grow into normal, well-adjusted kids.

  Something that for Beatrix will never happen.

  My daughter is a musical genius, something I accidentally discovered when she was four, when after a quick dash through Fresh Market she hummed a perfectly pitched concerto all the way home. A few weeks later at Target, she picked out the melody with two chubby fingers on a keyboard, but it was the pink toy violin she begged to take home. Within a few months, I managed to find a teacher willing to give formal lessons to such a young student. The woman, a stern grandmotherly type, emerged from their first session pink-cheeked and throwing around the word prodigy.

  My Beatrix is special. Thanks to an accident of fate and chance and random genes, she will never grow into that normal child the pediatrician promised. She has this astonishing, one-in-a-million gift, but one that comes with an ear that hears her every mistake. A perfectionist with mile-high standards for herself, quick to become frustrated and anxious when her fingers don’t cooperate.