A beer warming beside his knee.
“We’ll pay it back,” he told me.
“It isn’t a loan,” I said.
“Claire—”
“It’s ours.”
He looked at me.
“Ours?”
“Ours.”
Then he kissed me.
For years, that memory had been sacred.
Now it felt contaminated.
Grace continued walking the court through our marriage.
Photographs appeared.
I was in almost every one.
Behind Victor.
Beside Victor.
Sometimes blurred because I was moving.
A photograph from opening night showed me carrying two trays through the dining room while Victor shook hands with a local food critic.
Another showed me kneeling under a sink repairing a leak.
Another showed me decorating the private dining room seven months pregnant.
I lost that pregnancy nine days later.
Victor had told me grief was “bad for service morale.”
I had never told anyone that.
Not even Grace.
Some humiliations remain hidden so long they begin to feel like parts of your skeleton.
