“Terrified,” I said.
“You didn’t look scared. You looked like a queen.”
I laughed.
“I’ll tell you what I was thinking,” I said. “I was thinking about every woman I’ve ever known who got hurt by a man and then took it out on another woman. My mother. My aunt. Girls in high school. Women at work.” I put down my fork. “It’s the oldest story there is. A man does something terrible, and the women end up fighting each other over it. And the man just walks away. Like Mark did.”
“And you didn’t want to be part of that story,” Irvin said.
“I wanted to write a different ending,” I said. “Vanessa told me to prepare for divorce. She told me men get bored. She told me I should have seen it coming.” I looked at him. “And the easiest thing in the world would have been to prove her right. To fight her. To scream at her across the fence. To humiliate her in front of the whole street. That’s what she expected. That’s what she was ready for.”
