For years, she had believed with all her heart that her beloved sister’s death was nothing more than a terrible accident on a dark, slick set of apartment steps.
But the thick white envelope, pressed into her hands by a complete stranger, shattered that belief for good and forced her to see the man she lived with in an entirely different light. The wooden cemetery bench felt bitterly cold, and the sharp spring wind cut right through her wool coat.
With her numb fingers locked together in her lap, Natalie sat stiff and silent, staring at her husband by the freshly filled grave. Greg stood straight in a tailored wool overcoat, his face arranged in a careful expression of grief. Even in a moment this bleak, he somehow still looked polished and composed, the kind of man people instinctively admired.
He bent down in one smooth motion and laid three red carnations on the damp mound of earth.
Then he stood there with his head bowed, projecting the exact picture of a grieving family member. To anyone watching, it looked appropriate, respectful, even moving.
Except those flowers gave him away. They showed, in one small detail, how little he really knew about the woman they were burying.
Laura had hated carnations since she was a teenager. She thought they looked stiff and funereal, and she couldn’t stand their heavy smell. Natalie flinched when a quiet voice beside her asked, “Excuse me… is that man your husband?”
A woman in a black headscarf had sat down on the other end of the bench without Natalie noticing.
She looked worn out, almost sick with exhaustion, and the dark circles under her eyes suggested she hadn’t slept properly in days. Her pale fingers gripped the handle of an old handbag resting on her knees…
