Michael understood more than she said aloud.
Around this time, Abigail started noticing things she wished she had not noticed.
Ruth began coming home at dawn.
Not once. Repeatedly.
One morning, Abigail heard the front door open at twenty past five. She stood hidden in the dark hallway and watched Ruth come inside barefoot, carrying her heels, moving carefully so no one would hear.
A few days later, the senior security guard, Thomas, quietly warned Abigail near the garage.
“Be careful,” he said.
“Of what?”
He lowered his voice. “There’s a man in a dark car. He comes at strange hours. Madam goes to meet him.”
Abigail felt cold all over.
She tried to tell herself it was none of her business. But then she saw it herself.
Coming back from the market one afternoon, she saw Ruth at the gate leaning into the driver’s window of a dark car, laughing with a younger man. The intimacy between them was unmistakable. Ruth turned and saw Abigail watching. For a second, the mask slipped. Then it snapped back into place.
“What are you looking at?” Ruth said.
