Chương 2
“Go inside,” Vanessa said.
Curtis frowned.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
For the first time that evening, he seemed uncertain.
Only for a second.
Then the confidence returned.
“You don't tell me what to do in my house.”
Vanessa looked at the open doorway.
Then she looked at him.
“No.”
She bent down and picked up the suitcase handle.
“This is exactly what I am talking about.”
Curtis watched her lift the case upright.
The clothes inside were still falling out.
A photograph was caught between the zipper and the fabric.
Vanessa pulled it free.
It was a picture of Robert sitting in the backyard three months before he died.
He was smiling.
Curtis was beside him.
Vanessa had taken the picture.
Curtis had forgotten she existed.
Her fingers tightened around the photograph.
Not because it was precious.
Because it was proof that the version of history Curtis wanted to create was incomplete.
Curtis noticed the picture.
His face changed slightly.
It was not fear.
Not yet.
It was recognition.
“You need to give me that.”
Vanessa folded the photograph once and placed it inside her coat pocket.
“No.”
Curtis stepped down one stair.
“Vanessa.”
She looked at him.
The way he said her name used to make her feel chosen.
Now it sounded like a warning.
“You don't know what you are doing.”
She almost believed him.
Almost.
Then she remembered something Robert had said during his last week in the hospital.
Not a grand statement.
Not a dramatic confession.
Just a tired sentence while he stared at the ceiling.
“People show you who they are when they think they don't need anything from you anymore.”
At the time, Vanessa thought he was talking about business.
Now she wondered if he had been talking about his son.
Curtis turned toward the house.
The conversation was finished in his mind.
That was his favorite way to win.
He simply decided the other person had stopped mattering.
Vanessa watched him reach for the door.
Then she spoke.
“You forgot who was there when he was dying.”
Curtis stopped.
His hand remained on the handle.
The porch became silent.
For a moment, even the street seemed to wait.
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Curtis stopped.
His hand remained on the handle.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
The confidence on his face faded into something harder to read.
“You don't know what you saw,” he said.
Vanessa stared at him.
“I was there.”
“That doesn't mean you understand what happened.”
It was the kind of answer Curtis always gave when facts became inconvenient.
He did not deny things directly.
He moved around them.
He changed the shape of the conversation until the other person was defending themselves instead.
Vanessa had spent years accepting that pattern without realizing how much energy it took.
She had thought marriage meant learning someone's habits.
She had not considered that some habits were warnings.
“What exactly am I supposed to understand?” she asked.
Curtis opened the door slightly.
Warm air from the house moved past him and carried the smell of the expensive candle Vanessa had bought last Christmas.
A smell that suddenly felt like it belonged to someone else.
“You are upset.”
Vanessa almost smiled.
“That is your explanation?”
“You are emotional right now.”
“I am standing outside a house I lived in while you throw my things onto the ground.”
“You are making this dramatic.”
The sentence landed differently this time.
Not because it was new.
Because she finally heard what was underneath it.
Curtis was not asking her to calm down.
He was asking her to stop making him uncomfortable.
Vanessa looked at the scattered clothes again.
Then at the doorway.
Then at the man she had defended to friends, family, and strangers.
“You really believe you did nothing wrong.”
Curtis did not answer immediately.
That pause bothered her more than if he had shouted.
“No,” he said.
“I believe I did what I had to do.”
The honesty surprised her.
For years, Curtis had hidden behind explanations.
Now he seemed almost relieved to stop pretending.
“Because your father left you money?”
“Because I built something.”
Vanessa shook her head slowly.
“You inherited something.”
Curtis's jaw tightened.
“That is easy for you to say.”
“Yes.”
Her voice softened.
“It is.”
The admission caught him off guard.
She was not fighting for the argument anymore.
She was finally seeing it.
Curtis stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
The blue door clicked shut.
The sound was small, but Vanessa felt it as a final decision.
He stood one step above her.
“You think I don't remember those years?”
Vanessa looked at him.
“I don't know what you remember anymore.”
His expression shifted.
A flash of irritation.
Then something closer to hurt.
It disappeared quickly.
“My father hated hospitals.”
Vanessa said nothing.
“He hated being weak.”
Curtis looked toward the street instead of at her.
“I was the one who handled his business when he got sick.”
“You came three times.”
His eyes moved back to her.
The sentence had come out before she could soften it.
Curtis stared.
“What?”
“You came three times during the last month.”
“That isn't true.”
Vanessa felt something cold settle in her stomach.
Not anger.
Something worse.
Doubt.
“You were there.”
“I was there more than you think.”
“Curtis.”
She reached into her coat pocket and touched the folded photograph.
“You missed the meeting with the doctor because you were in Chicago.”
His face changed.
Only slightly.
But she saw it.
A tiny reaction.
The kind she had learned to notice after years of living with someone who rarely admitted anything.
“How do you know about that?”
“Because I was the person the doctor called.”
The silence between them grew heavier.
A car passed slowly on the street.
The headlights moved across the brick wall and disappeared.
Curtis looked away.
“You always liked keeping score.”
Vanessa blinked.
That was not the answer she expected.
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“I kept records because someone had to.”
“You made me look like I wasn't there.”
