“You look wonderful,” he said.
“So do you.”
He smiled proudly.
For the next hour, we played our assigned roles.
He introduced me to colleagues as his beautiful wife. I accepted congratulations. We posed for photographs and laughed at stories about our early years.
Then Sofia arrived.
She wore an elegant cream-colored dress and carried a small gift bag.
“Margaret!” she exclaimed, approaching me with a bright smile. “You look absolutely beautiful.”
“Thank you, Sofia.”
She hugged me.
I felt her arms around my shoulders and wondered whether she had embraced me after secretly meeting my husband the previous night.
“I brought you something,” she said, handing me the bag. “You deserve something special after forty years.”
I looked at the gift.
“How thoughtful.”
Her smile faltered for half a second.
Perhaps she noticed something in my expression. Perhaps she simply felt uncomfortable standing in front of the woman she had betrayed.
