Then she said, “Whatever happens after I’m gone, don’t let anyone convince you kindness makes you stupid.”
I didn’t know then that she wasn’t speaking in general.
It was the only lie I could come up with on short notice.
I thought the medication was making her emotional.
***
Valerie died three weeks later.
Afterward, I filed for divorce.
Zion didn’t fight it.
Three months later, Nadia posted a photograph of an engagement ring.
I found out because my cousin called me.
I filed for divorce.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“I have bad news and worse news. The bad news is they’re engaged.”
I closed my eyes.
“Of course they are. What’s the worse news?”
“I have bad news and worse news.”
“What they’ve been saying about you, and their relationship.”
Apparently, their official story was that they had never meant to hurt me.
They had “fallen in love.”
They had “handled the situation badly.”
Then the story got worse.
“They say that after you discovered the affair, you poisoned Valerie against her own son while she was dying,” my cousin said softly. “They say you manipulated her into changing her will.”
“What they’ve been saying about you.”
“What? I didn’t even know Valerie changed her will. And why would they say that, unless… Did she leave me something?”
“I don’t know. If she did, it hasn’t come up.”
I ended the call.
That lie hurt almost as much as the affair.
People who had hugged me at Valerie’s funeral stopped calling.
That lie hurt almost as much as the affair.
One relative I’d known for years asked whether I’d really pressured a dying woman over money.
Zion and Nadia hadn’t just betrayed me.
They were turning the months I’d spent caring for Valerie into evidence that I’d been using her all along.
***
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