Chapter 2 - The Woman With the Flowers
She was young. Maybe twenty-six. Pretty in an unbothered way, like nothing hard had ever happened to her.
She was holding a bouquet. I hadn't given it to her.
Nathan walked straight up to her, took her face in both hands — both hands, the way he used to hold mine — and kissed her. In his cap and gown. In front of hundreds of people.
My legs just quit. I stood there in my sixty-two-dollar dress while the families around me clapped, because to them it looked like the sweetest thing they'd ever seen. A brand-new doctor kissing his girl.
Then Nathan turned and saw me standing there.
He didn't flinch. He didn't go pale. He looked at me the way you look at a chore you forgot to do.
He crossed the aisle and spoke so quietly that no one else could hear it.
"Diane. Don't make a scene."
"Who is she?" I said.
He smoothed the front of his gown. "We'll talk about it later."
"Tell me who she is."
He glanced back at her, then at me, and his voice didn't change at all when he said it.
"She's the reason I made it through. Not you."
I couldn't get air in.
All around us, people were laughing and hugging and holding phones up for pictures. A whole room full of celebration, and not one person knew that a man in a graduation gown had just gutted his wife in the third row.
Then an older woman stepped up beside him and put her hand on his sleeve.
His mother. Eleanor.
May you like
She looked at me, and I braced for shock, or pity, or at least discomfort.
What I got instead was relief. Pure relief. Like a woman who'd been holding her breath for years and had finally been told she could let it out.
