The Dollhouse Society: Margo by Eden Myles Read Free Book Online Page B

“Eggs,” I said between kisses. “And bacon. And pancakes!”
    He laughed. “Yes, milady.” And slid off the bed.
    “What about my binds?”
    He smiled greedily. “I’ll feed you by hand.”
    Once he’d gone, I went to work undoing the knot of the tie. Over the years, I’d gotten very good at tying, and untying, knots. Once I was free—it didn’t take more than a few minutes—I grabbed up a robe and got to my feet. The Queen Anne desk was the most logical place to start my investigation. I went over the top and the cubbies first, then checked all the drawers, starting at the pencil drawer and working my way down both sides. I found office supplies, ledgers, notepads, all kinds of junk, until I reached the bottom right-hand drawer.
    That’s when I discovered the fireproof metal lock box. I dragged it out and set it on the desktop. It was old and battered—it was obvious that Robert had had it a long time—but not locked. Inside, I found what I was looking for—and dreading. There were a large number of check receipts, the amounts generous and the most recent dated only last week. They were all made out to an Amanda Burkett. As I dug down, I also found a pocket-sized picture of a pretty brunette in her mid-thirties smiling for the camera, and a number of carefully folded watercolor pictures done with a childish enthusiasm. Green grass, a happy couple holding hands amidst scrawled flowers, and a bright yellow sun in the upper right-hand corner.
    I looked over each of the drawings even as I felt my heart stutter inside me. Eventually, I returned to the picture of the young woman. Amanda Burkett. The woman he’d never mentioned in any conversation we’d ever had. The checks dated back almost twenty years. Joanne would have known. She would have had to.
    I was shaking so badly I could barely throw on my clothes from last night, but somehow I managed. I went out into the apartment, carrying the picture of Amanda with me. I found Robert in the kitchen, dressed in only his pajama bottoms, frying eggs in an iron skillet. When he turned and saw me, his face seemed to freeze and I felt the fission in the air.
    I walked up to him and put the photo down on the counter in front of him.
    He looked at it and something passed behind his eyes, some darkness. “How did you get this?” he said, a question that surprised me.
    “When were you going to tell me about your family?” My voice trembled and I could taste the tears in the back of my throat.
    Anger, insult and fear warred for dominance of his face. “ That is no concern of yours, Margo. You had no right snooping in my things.”
    “And you had no right making me believe that I was the only one!”
    “I never cheated on you!”
    “But you did lie to me,” I said, choking back the tears. “Did you take that money, too?”
    Unexpectedly, he grabbed up the skillet and threw it viciously into the empty sink where it made a bone-shaking clanking noise. “What you did is grounds for dismissal in my company! I’m still senior partner here!”
    I had never seen Robert, quiet Robert, so angry in my life. He didn’t show this level of outrage even in the courtroom. His anger passed over and through me like a charge of electricity, leaving me shaking in its wake.
    So he wasn’t going to explain himself. He was going to turn this all around, the way Brent had. Somehow, in those last months of our marriage, it had become all my fault he was cheating. I was the bitch, the banshee, the Nazi—the enemy. 
    Robert and I stared at each other like a couple of irate gunslingers while the eggs continued to sizzle in the skillet and filled the kitchen with their greasy burning. “You don’t have to dismiss me, Robert,” I said with a calmness that shocked and frightened me. “I just quit five minutes ago.”
    He changed just then. The anger drained from his face. “Margo, wait…” He reached for my arm.
    But I raised my hands in a sign he should back off even as I moved