# Chapter 42: The Weight of Secrets
Hello everyone, it’s me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 42 of *The Housemaid’s Secret* — a chapter where the walls close in, old secrets claw their way to the surface, and Millie Calloway finds herself staring into the cold, unblinking eyes of a murder investigation.
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The minutes stretched like hours. Millie sat alone in that sterile interrogation room, her heart hammering against her ribs, her thoughts spinning in frantic circles. She kept waiting for someone to walk in and tell her this was all a mistake, that she could just go home. But no one came. Not for forty agonizing minutes.
Then, finally, Brock’s familiar face appeared in the doorway. Relief crashed over her so hard she nearly burst into tears. “What took so long?” she cried.
But something was wrong. Brock’s expression was troubled, his movements stiff as he lowered himself into the chair across from her. A deep crease sat between his eyebrows like a crater. He wasn’t here to tell her everything was fine. He was here to tell her the truth.
“Millie,” he said, his voice heavy, “I’ve been talking to the detective outside. They’re reluctant to tell me too much, but this isn’t a routine questioning. You are a serious suspect.”
Millie stared at him, disbelief crashing over her like a cold wave. How could that be? Wendy had confessed. She told the police *she* shot Douglas. It should have been open and shut. Unless... unless something was wrong. Unless someone was twisting the story.
Then Brock delivered the next blow. “They have a warrant to search your apartment. They have a team there right now.”
A warrant. Her apartment. Millie’s mind raced, desperately trying to remember if there was anything incriminating hidden among her things. No. No, there couldn’t be. She hadn’t brought anything home from the penthouse. She had checked her clothes for blood the night before — there was nothing. Nothing at all.
“Why would they think you killed him?” Brock shook his head, genuinely baffled. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
And that was the moment Millie knew. This was it. The wall she had built around her past was about to crumble. If Brock was going to help her, if he was going to stand beside her as her lawyer, he needed to know the ugly truth she had been hiding for so long.
“Listen,” she said, her voice barely steady. “There’s something you need to know about me.”
Brock raised his eyebrows, waiting.
The words felt like shards of glass in her throat. She cursed herself for not telling him sooner, but now that she was finally doing it, she remembered exactly why she had put it off for so long. She was terrified of the way he would look at her after.
“I sort of have a, you know, a prison record.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
“You have a *what*?” Brock’s jaw looked like it might unhinge. “A prison record? Like you were in prison?”
“Yeah. That’s kind of what a prison record means.”
“For what?”
And here came the hardest part. The part she had buried so deep, she almost believed she could escape it forever. “It was for murder.”
Brock looked like he was two seconds away from keeling over. Millie half-worried for his heart. “Murder?”
“It was self-defense,” she said, though even she knew that wasn’t entirely true. “This man was attacking my friend, and I stopped him. I was a teenager at the time.”
Brock gave her a long, searching look. “You don’t go to prison for self-defense.”
“Some people do.”
He didn’t believe her. She could see it in his eyes. But she couldn’t bring herself to go into the ugly details — the boy who was trying to rape her friend, the violence that spiraled out of control, the prosecutors who made it sound like she had gone too far. That story was locked somewhere deep inside her, and she wasn’t ready to let it out.
“No wonder you never got your college degree,” Brock muttered to himself, almost as if he was talking to the air. “I always just told myself you were a late bloomer.”
“I’m sorry.” Millie lowered her eyes, shame burning through her. “I should have told you.”
“Gee, you think?”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice cracking. “But I was scared if I did, you would look at me like... well, the way you’re looking at me right now.”
Brock raked a hand through his hair, the frustration rolling off him in waves. “Jesus, Millie. I just... I knew there was something you didn’t want to tell me about, but I never imagined...”
“Yeah,” she breathed.
He loosened his blue tie a notch, trying to pull himself together. “Okay. Okay, you have a prison record. That aside for a moment, why do they think you killed Douglas Garrick?”
Millie couldn’t answer. She didn’t know what Wendy had told the police. And even though everything she said to Brock was supposed to be confidential, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him what really happened last night. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“I have no idea.”
Brock cocked his head, thoughtful. “You told me last night that you were sick. Did you leave their apartment early?”
“Well, I finished up my work,” she said carefully, knowing full well that the doorman could confirm when she left the building. “But since I wasn’t feeling well, I went straight home after. I was already almost home when we talked on the phone. Douglas... he wasn’t even there when I left the apartment.”
“Okay.” Brock rubbed his chin, trying to reassure himself as much as her. “They’re just giving you a hard time because of your record. We’re going to sort this out.”
Millie wished she had his confidence. But she didn’t. Not even close.
Time crawled. It turned out that Detective Ramirez wasn’t able to talk to her right away — a tactic Millie suspected was meant to break her down. Brock had to take a call from work, leaving her alone in that cold, suffocating room for another hour while panic gnawed at her insides.
By the time Ramirez finally walked in, Millie had been at the police station for over two hours. Brock followed close behind and slid into the seat next to her. Under the table, he gave her hand a quick, reassuring squeeze. It was comforting to know he didn’t completely hate her, despite discovering her prison record. Although, as she thought grimly, the day was still young.
“Thank you for your patience, Miss Calloway,” the detective said, his expression a complete blank. “I have some questions for you about Mr. Garrick.”
“Okay,” Millie said, forcing herself to stay calm. They were being recorded. Every word mattered. Every hesitation could be used against her.
“Where were you last night?” Ramirez asked.
“I went over to the Garricks’ penthouse to do some light cleaning and laundry, then I went home.”
“What time did you leave the penthouse?”
“About six-thirty,” she said, keeping her voice steady.
But even as the words left her mouth, Millie knew this was only the beginning. The detective was watching her, studying her, waiting for her to slip. And somewhere in the back of her mind, a terrifying question echoed: *What exactly did Wendy tell them?*
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**Reader’s Impressions & Star Rating:**
This chapter is a masterclass in tension. Freida McFadden takes us into the suffocating fear of being interrogated, while peeling back another layer of Millie’s painful past. The moment she confesses her prison record to Brock is raw, heartbreaking, and utterly gripping. You can feel her shame, his shock, and the fragile thread of trust barely holding them together. The pacing is relentless, and the ending leaves you desperate for more. I absolutely loved it!
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.9 / 5 Stars
**Next Chapter Prediction:**
I think the next chapter is going to be explosive. Millie is going to learn exactly what Wendy told the police — and it’s almost certain to be a carefully crafted lie designed to frame Millie for Douglas’s murder. With her criminal record now exposed, the police will see her as their prime suspect, and Millie will have to use every ounce of her survival instincts to prove her innocence. But the bigger question is: why is Wendy turning against her? And what dark secret is Wendy hiding that could destroy all of them?
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