“When I was younger,” Selena said, “I thought someone had betrayed me.I thought he’d been unfaithful.”
Connor’s face tightened in her peripheral vision.
Renee’s eyes sharpened.“Thought?”
“I didn’t know everything.I knew enough to hurt.Enough to make a story in my head and live inside it, whether it was true or not.I never got to the truth, and it nearly killed me.”
Connor said nothing.
Bradley swallowed loudly.Sweat ran down the side of his face.
Selena kept going, voice low and steady.“That kind of suspicion changes the room you’re in.It changes how a person breathes beside you.Every late call becomes proof.Every silence becomes proof.You get used to the pain.You see every little change of behavior as more proof that he’s with someone else.”
Renee’s expression shifted.For the first time, something like recognition moved beneath the calm.
“Then you know,” Renee said.
“I know it can make you think things.Weird, angry, vengeful things, even when you don’t have definitive proof beyond hearsay.”
Renee’s hand tightened on the gun.
Selena stopped moving.
“You’re doing it now,” Selena said.“With Bradley.With Sheila.You don’t know their marriage.”
“I saw enough.”
“You saw a wife step away from her husband.You heard gossip in a diner.That’s not enough to kill a man.”
“It’s enough to protect her.”
“No.It’s enough to ask questions.It’s enough to tell Sheila what you heard.It isn’t enough for this or breaking the law.”
Renee’s mouth trembled once, then settled.
“Law did nothing for Sandra,” she said.“Nothing for Marlene.Nothing for me.”
“Gary’s death was not justice,” Selena said.“He died before you could confront him.Then what was left?Anger and vengeance burning a hole in you until you couldn’t take any more.”
Renee’s gaze flicked to her, fast and sharp.“Gary was mine.He… he shouldn’t have done what he did.”
Silence spread across the lawn.
In the house, the television laugh track rose and fell behind the curtains.
Renee’s face emptied of apology.“Gary was going to make me live with the insult.Every day.Every room.Then he had the audacity to die before I could show him how much he’d hurt me!”
Connor’s grip tightened around his gun.
Selena felt the confession land, but there was no room to react to it.Not yet.
Bradley whispered, “Please.”
Renee looked back at him.“Did Sheila ask you to stop seeing theother woman?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
