Chapter 16
SIENNA
The ladies’ room off the mezzanine is empty, and the quiet is the first I have had since I got out of the car.
I set my clutch on the marble counter and check my hair.
The program starts in twenty minutes. My speech is already where it needs to be, and for once there is nothing for me to carry, fix, smooth over, or explain before I walk into that room.
The woman in the mirror is wearing plum silk.
The dress fits close through the waist and follows the curve of my hips.
I chose it myself. I had it altered twice until it fit exactly the way I wanted it to fit, and I am still getting used to the fact that I can look at myself in it without immediately wondering what somebody else would think.
The door opens behind me.
I see Ashley in the mirror before I turn. Her heels cross the tile at an unhurried pace, and she comes to the counter beside mine in red silk and diamonds, sets down her clutch, and looks at me through the mirror.
“Sienna.” She says my name the way you greet someone’s dog. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Ashley.”
She takes out a lipstick and uncaps it. Her eyes move from my face to the dress and stay there long enough that we can both dispense with pretending she is not inspecting me.
“Plum,” she says. “That’s brave.”
I smooth one side of my hair behind my ear. “Is it?”
“With your coloring? A little.” She applies lipstick to the center of her lower lip. “And that cut is awfully close through the hips. Most women soften as they get older, but you’ve always been fuller.” Her eyes drop again. “I’d have thought something less fitted would be more forgiving.”
Fuller.
There is nothing in her face. No recognition, no small pleasure at having found an old wound.
She has no idea she has said it to me before.
I have remembered that word in dressing rooms and hotel rooms and in front of my own closet before dinners with my husband.
Ashley does not even remember saying it.
“The dress fits,” I say. “I had it fitted. That’s what the word means.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“Well. You look very confident, and honestly, good for you. It takes courage.” She caps her lipstick.
“I only hope you didn’t choose it with anyone in mind.
That would be sad, all things considered.
Cade has a type, sweetheart, and you were never going to be it.
He married you to solve a business problem.
Everyone in that room knows it — you knew it.
You’re the one who wanted out.” A small, kind smile.
“The divorce is the best thing for everyone. Even you saw that eventually.”
“Then it’s lucky,” I say, “that I no longer care what Cade thinks.”
She blinks.
“I didn’t choose this dress for him. I chose it because I like it.”
I pick up my clutch.
“You’ve gotten bold,” she says softly. “That’s sweet.
But you gave him up, darling. So whatever this is”—she gestures at the dress, at me, at all of it—“it’s a little late, and it’s a little desperate, and everyone downstairs will see exactly what I see.
” She leans in a half-inch, and her voice drops into something almost warm, almost pitying, which is how she has always made her cruelest remarks.
“Let me tell you something, one woman to another. Cade Belluomo has loved exactly one person in his life. She is standing in front of you. Ten years, sweetheart. Before you, all through you, after you. A man like that doesn’t stop.
You were his wife. I was the woman he loved.
I’m the authority on that man. I always have been. ”
I could leave it there. I could let her have the last word and walk out. I almost do.
But I have spent years swallowing what this woman said to me, letting her tell me what Cade wanted, what he felt, what I lacked.
For once, I know something she doesn’t. And I know it is going to hurt.
“Oh, Ashley.”
She looks up.
“Cade came to my house the other night. In the middle of a storm. He walked half a mile through the rain because the turnaround was flooded.” I watch her face begin to change. “He came all that way to tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“He doesn’t love you.”
She stops.
“He said he never did.”
The color moves up her throat and into her face, under the makeup, and for the first time in two years I see Ashley Vauclair lose her composure.
I open the door.
“So maybe,” I say, “you aren’t the authority on Cade that you think you are.”