She was younger than I’d thought from the camera. Maybe forty-two, forty-three. Her mascara had run and dried in faint gray lines down her cheeks.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
I believed her. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I recognized the look on her face. The look of a woman who had just realized the man she’d married was not who he’d said he was.
I’d worn that look myself, for years, every time I caught my reflection in a dark window.
“He told you I was cold,” I said. “That I didn’t appreciate him. That nothing he did was ever good enough for me.”
Vanessa’s eyes widened.
“He told me you’d say that,” she whispered. “He said you’d try to turn me against him.”
“I’m not trying to turn you against anyone,” I said. “You saw what you saw today. You don’t need me to tell you what it means.”
