“No.”
She came closer.
“Walter, your children are manipulating you.”
I almost smiled.
“That argument would have worked better before you tried to have me declared incapable.”
“I was protecting you.”
“From what?”
“You were declining.”
“My independent physician disagrees.”
“You found someone who told you what you wanted.”
“The doctor you chose had already drafted his conclusion before Monday’s evaluation.”
Her mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
I said, “That was careless.”
Then Vanessa did something I did not expect.
She stopped pretending.
“You think Sophie and Ethan care about you?”
Sophie went rigid.
Vanessa pointed toward them.
“They disappeared the second you married me.”
“No,” I said. “I pushed them away because they questioned you.”
“They want your money.”
Ethan finally spoke.
“If that were true, we would have encouraged Dad to stay married to you. You were doing an excellent job making our inheritance larger by shortening his expenses.”
“Ethan,” Sophie hissed.
“What? Too soon?”
Under different circumstances, I might have laughed.
Vanessa stared at all three of us.
Then at Lily, who had been standing quietly near the ballroom entrance.
Her face changed.
“You.”
Lily did not move.
Vanessa understood.
“You went through my things.”
“No,” Lily said. “I heard you talking.”
“You little—”
“Enough,” I said.
Vanessa turned back to me.
“I loved you.”
That hurt more than anything else she said that evening.
Because part of me wanted desperately to believe there had once been something true.
Maybe there had.
People are rarely simple enough for total lies.
Perhaps Vanessa enjoyed our travels.
Perhaps she liked some of our evenings.
Perhaps there were moments when affection and greed occupied the same room.
It no longer mattered.
“I loved you too,” I said.
