So I opened the door.
Vanessa looked at me as though she had prepared herself for shouting and didn’t know what to do with silence.
Her eyes were red.
Her hair was tied back.
She had put her wedding ring on again.
That detail almost impressed me.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
I stepped aside.
She rolled her suitcase across the hardwood floor and stopped in the living room.
For seven years, that room had contained nearly every version of us.
Christmas mornings.
Takeout dinners on the couch.
The night my father died, when she held me until sunrise.
Sunday arguments over paint colors.
Friends crowded around the dining table.
Claire laughing over a glass of wine only a few feet from where Vanessa now stood pretending she had returned to save her marriage.
“I know how this looks,” she began.
I nearly answered, but I wanted to hear the version she had traveled thousands of miles to deliver.
So I sat in the armchair and said, “Tell me.”
Her shoulders dropped slightly.
She thought that meant I was listening because I wanted to believe her.
It meant I was listening because I wanted to know how far she would go.
“Derek was in Italy,” she said.
“I didn’t plan that.”
I said nothing.
“We started talking before the trip.
Just talking.
I should’ve told you.”
“How long?”
“A few weeks.”
The screenshots suggested otherwise, but I let her continue.
“He found out I was going to Rome.
He said he might be there for business.
Then we met for dinner.
The pictures made everything look worse than it was.”
“The yacht?”
She looked away.
“He invited me.”
“The hotel?”
“My reservation had problems.”
“The shirt?”
“It was cold.”
“The kiss?”
That finally stopped her.
I watched her calculate.
Which kiss had I seen?
How much did I know?
Which lie was safest?
“It happened once,” she said quietly.
“And I stopped it.”
I thought of the porch twelve minutes earlier.
I thought of her fingers twisted into Derek’s jacket.
I thought of her saying, Let me fix Ryan first.
Still, I gave her one more chance.
“Did Derek bring you here tonight?”
Her eyes met mine immediately.
