You had expected Elliot to wait until after the burial.
A decent liar usually saves his victory lap for the repast, when the casseroles come out and the old women are too tired to track who is standing too close to whom. But Elliot had never been as patient as he believed he was. He walked into St. Bartholomew’s with his mistress clinging to his arm, the church doors swinging open behind them as if the day itself were there to announce his appetite.
The whole sanctuary noticed.
Not all at once. First the women near the front pews turned with that sharp, involuntary curiosity only funerals and scandals can produce. Then the ushers looked up. Then the whisper moved down the aisle, light at first, then faster, until the hush around your polished casket grew teeth. By the time Elliot and the woman on his arm reached the middle of the church, grief had already begun changing shape.
You had known he might do exactly this.
That was the thing nobody in the church understood about you, not the ladies from school, not the neighbors who bought your hand-painted ornaments at Christmas, not even the people who genuinely loved you. They all thought softness meant surprise. They thought a woman who kept her voice gentle and her cardigans plain must surely have moved through the world half-asleep. But you had been awake for years.
The woman with Elliot was younger than you, though not by enough to justify the way she wore youth like a diploma.
Her black dress was too sleek for mourning, her heels too high for a church service, her lipstick too deliberate. She was not dressed to grieve you. She was dressed to survive photographs. She kept one manicured hand looped through Elliot’s arm in a way that said she wanted everyone to know she had already stepped into the vacancy.
He looked almost relieved.
That was what would have hurt the most if you had not spent the last seven months preparing yourself for exactly this. Elliot wore a charcoal suit, a somber tie, and the expression of a man trying hard to look burdened by a tragedy he had already decided to monetize. Every now and then he dipped his chin, accepted a nod, squeezed the mistress’s fingers once, and looked toward your casket with the blank impatience of someone waiting for the legal part to begin.
From the pulpit, Pastor Warren cleared his throat.
