I stared at her.
“Excuse me?”
Vanessa dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
“Don’t look so shocked. You’re not the first woman to grow comfortable in a marriage. And you certainly won’t be the last woman to lose a man because she stopped making an effort.”
I slowly placed my coffee cup on its saucer.
“Are you talking about my husband?”
She smiled again.
“Who else?”
I should have thrown her out of my house that afternoon.
Instead, I looked at the woman sitting across from me and wondered what kind of loneliness, bitterness, or arrogance could make somebody behave so shamelessly.
Vanessa had moved into the house next door three weeks earlier. She was thirty-eight, recently divorced, beautiful in a carefully maintained way, and always dressed as though she expected to be photographed at any moment.
When she arrived, I had welcomed her like any other neighbor. I’d carried over a homemade pie, offered to recommend a good plumber, and even invited her to join our neighborhood walking group.
