Chapter 11
The room seemed to tilt slightly.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“She told me I had a wife waiting for me.”
I heard rain again.
My own voice calling his name.
The car door closing.
“Then why were divorce papers waiting for me the next morning?”
His jaw tightened.
“Because I put them there.”
“Why?”
He looked at me for a long time.
“Because when I came home and saw you had packed a suitcase, I knew what I had done.”
“That still doesn’t answer me.”
“I thought you were going to leave.”
“So you left first?”
“Yes.”
I almost could not believe what I was hearing.
“You destroyed ten years because you were afraid I would leave you?”
“I destroyed ten years because I was proud, angry, terrified, and too accustomed to solving every threat before it could reach me.”
“I was not a threat.”
“No.”
His voice cracked on the word.
“You were the only person who ever mattered enough to frighten me.”
“That is not romantic, Adrian.”
“I know.”
“You called me a mistake.”
His face went still.
“That was the cruelest thing I have ever said.”
“It worked.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get credit for regretting something after it succeeds.”
“I’m not asking for credit.”
I looked away before he could see tears beginning to sting my eyes.
For six years, I had built my survival around one simple belief.
Vanessa returned, Adrian chose her, and I finally learned what our marriage had always meant.
Now the story was changing under my feet.
Not enough to absolve him.
Maybe enough to make the past more complicated than I wanted it to be.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Adrian and I both froze.
I answered immediately.
“Vanessa?”
“Yes.”
Her voice sounded tired.
“Are you alone?”
I looked at Adrian.
“No.”
Silence.
Then she said, “Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, the chapel beside St.
Catherine’s Hospital.”
I knew the place.
Vanessa had spent years receiving treatment at St.
Catherine’s.
“I’ll come.”
“Alone, Evelyn.”
Adrian shook his head before I said anything.
I ignored him.
“Why did you photograph my children?”
A trembling breath came through the phone.
“Because I recognized his eyes.”
I looked at Adrian.
He had heard.
“Were you following us?”
“Not at first.”
“What does that mean?”
“I was in Cambridge for a consultation.”
That stopped me.
“I saw you outside a café.”
My mind raced backward through the last several weeks.