With another stiff groan of the pages, the state of his marriage appeared in vivid color. Daniel turned away from Kelly, staring off into the distance. That could easily be true. The next page, his smile at someone off camera. Another page, Milly crying at the party. While he hadn’t been able to find out if that was true, it might as well have been.

He slapped the album shut. He was overthinking. This had to end.

He placed the camera in the briefcase. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and threw the film slip from Simon’s Film Lab on top of the camera. His thumbs whirred the combination out of sync, and Gramps’s briefcase resumed its place hidden away from the world. He leaned back on the closed door, the threat neutralized, his secret now safe and back under his control. He would reveal it when he was ready.

The screen saver on his laptop flashed the front cover of No Secrets. He thumped the space bar, more to banish the image than to wake his computer. A document appeared on screen. Ten pages of words extracted by nervous sweat and teeth-grinding anxiety. Few worth reading. None worth publishing.

His chair bounced as he sat with intent, and Daniel took a deep breath, fuel for his inspiration. He would force this book out whether it liked it or not.

It didn’t like it.

Several halting sentences tiptoed their way onto his screen as if scared to wake the delete key. Daniel grimaced as he typed, the words in his head not willing to sentence themselves to a short-lived existence. Daniel dropped his head, and with a mighty roar, he pounded his fists on the desk.

The echo of his anger dissipated as a soft knock sounded at the door. It edged open to reveal Kelly.

She bit her lip, and tears sprang forth. Daniel jumped up and hurried forward as her emotions spilled out in a gush. “I quit today . . . One doctor asked me about side effects . . . I couldn’t lie if it will hurt children . . . He called Rubicon himself.”

Daniel placed his hands on her jerking shoulders. “You quit your job?”

The sobs bubbled from her. “Somebody told Arnold . . . playing his usual power games . . . told me to toe the company line, so I told him to shove it.”

Daniel embraced her. “Wow.”

Kelly sobbed as he stroked her hair. “If you thought you were endangering others, you did the right thing.”

“I know what it means in terms of the house. We’ll just have to tide things over until this book is finished.”

Daniel lost the battle with his rising defensiveness, and his shutters slid up. Kelly stood back and looked up at him as she gulped down her sobs. “Why is it taking so long?”