Chapter 6 - Elena
I sat on the wooden floor of the attic for an hour, holding the pharmacy slip between my thumb and forefinger.
Elena Vance.
The name was unfamiliar, yet the moment I held it in my mind, it filled the empty space that had been growing in our home for months.
That evening, after Mark came home and went to the basement to run on the treadmill, I sat in my downtown office with the blinds drawn and searched for Elena Vance.
It didn't take long.
She was thirty-two years old—seven years younger than me. She was a senior associate at an architectural firm downtown that frequently bid on municipal projects alongside Mark’s financial advisory firm. She had dark, shoulder-length hair, sharp brown eyes, and a sleek, modern aesthetic revealed through her public professional profile.
According to her firm’s website, she had joined their executive team in August of last year.
October 18. Two months after her arrival in the city.
I looked at a photograph of her standing at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new riverfront plaza downtown. She was wearing a tailored olive green blazer, holding a pair of ceremonial gold scissors, and smiling at the camera.
Sitting three rows behind her in the VIP audience section, barely visible in the soft focus of the background, was my husband.
He was looking at her. Not at the mayor holding the ribbon. Not at the crowd. He was looking at the side of her face with an expression of quiet, focused intensity that made my throat tighten.
I zoomed in on his face until the pixels blurred.
May you like
There was no rage in me then. There was only a profound, freezing clarity. The vague, terrifying monster of "suspicion" had been replaced by a person with a name, a job, an address, and a face.
I printed her photograph, folded it into quarters, and slid it into the white envelope downstairs, right beside the receipt from Bellamy’s.
