Page 25 of The Wife He Accused

CHAPTER 9

MELODY

The weekend settledaround Angelica's apartment like something quiet and ordinary. It was not quiet inside Melody.

Saturday morning came in thin and gray through the windows. Angelica was already awake, moving around the kitchen in bare feet, the low hum of the coffee maker filling the space between them. There was music on, something old and familiar, the kind of song that used to play in their mother's kitchen when they were kids, when mornings had meant cereal, rushed conversations and the constant low-grade urgency of getting through the day.

Melody sat at the small table by the window, hands wrapped around a mug she hadn't drunk from. Angelica set a plate in front of her — eggs, toast, something that smelled like effort.

"Eat," Angelica said, not unkindly.

Melody nodded and did not eat. For a while neither of them spoke. The silence was not empty. It was waiting. Angelica leaned against the counter with her arms crossed loosely and watched her.

"Okay," she said finally. "Start."

Melody looked down at the table, at the grain of the wood, at the small scratch near the edge where Angelica had oncedropped a knife and then pretended it hadn't happened. "I don't know where to start."

"Start with what happened. Not the version you've been telling yourself. The actual version."

Melody exhaled. And then, because there was nothing left to hold back, she told her.

She told her about the gala. The dress. Catherine's biting voice. Vivienne, bright and cutting and effortless. The question she hadn't known she was going to ask until it was already out of her mouth. The pause.

Angelica's expression didn't change. Melody kept going.

The car ride home, the distance between their hands, the way he'd made her ask the question again, as if repetition could fix what had already happened. The office. The text. The suite. She said it all: the wine, the shoes by the door, David's face when Alexander walked in, the way Alexander had looked at her. Certain.

And the words.I think you are a woman who came from very little, and married into a great deal. And it still wasn't enough.

She heard herself say them out loud and felt, again, the exact place they'd landed. In her heart.

She told Angelica about Agnes. About the suitcase. About the bracelet laid out like an item on a list. About the way she'd packed: jeans, sweaters, the pajamas, the plant.

She did not cry. Angelica listened without interrupting, her face still, her eyes fixed on Melody's in a way that did not let her look away from what she was saying. When Melody finished, the apartment was very quiet. The coffee had gone cold.

Angelica pushed off the counter and came to sit across from her. For a second she didn't speak. Then she said, gently, "You knew, Mel."

Melody's head lifted. "What?"

"The pause. At the gala. You knew then."

Melody shook her head, automatic. "It was nothing. It was —"

"It wasn't nothing." Angelica's voice was soft but it didn't move. "You felt it."

"I felt —" Melody stopped. The words caught. "I felt something. That doesn't mean —"

"It means your body knew before your brain would let you say it out loud."

Melody looked down at her hands, at the way her fingers were wrapped too tightly around the mug. "I didn't know it was this."

"No. You didn't know it would look like this. But you knew something was off."

Melody let that sit. The memory replayed, sharper now: the terrace, the city, the question, the pause, the way something had tilted inside her so small she'd almost convinced herself it hadn't happened. She had known. "I thought if I didn't push it, it would settle. That it was just timing. The room. Everything else."

Angelica's mouth pressed into a line that wasn't quite a smile. "You thought if you were good enough at this version of your life, it would stop feeling like you were being measured."

Melody looked up. "That's not —"