Page 5 of The Strength Of A Woman

Her sweet joke makes me smile and lift my eyes to her. An innocent reminder of why I love her so much.

Every time she is around, my life feels normal again.

It’s like we’re two little girls playing with our dolls, coming up with stories for them.

“The arranged marriage project…Hmm.”

I chuckle, although I shouldn’t.

“So far, it’s a draw. There’s no winner.”

“Good for you.”

I laugh again, and my eyes hover over her face, my mind spinning a thought.

“How was your morning? Have you seen or heard anything unusual?” I ask.

Have you seen Callum leave last night?

The question burning my lips remains suspended in the ether, having no voice. She couldn’t have seen him even if she were outside last night.

She shrugs softly, her hands resting in her lap.

A lapis lazuli ring sleeps around her finger. It’s the darkest blue she wears. The harshest one.

Everything else is from an easel of pastel colors or dipped in clear water, like her eyes.

As if a fountain of love lives in her eyes, every time she smiles, warmth pours toward me, making a swarm of goose pimples rise across my skin.

“Things were pretty normal. I had breakfast on the terrace. Oh, your aunt is here.”

A flash of tension zaps through me.

“Flavia?” I ask incredulously.

She nods a couple of times.

“Mm-hmm. She arrived this morning. Had a mysterious air about her, too.”

Rory comments with a smile and ease in her voice, but this particular detail only increases my apprehension.

Flavia. The invisible aunt. The woman who’d fucked my mother’s husband without remorse or at least she hadn’t pushed him back and put him in his place when he pursued her.

Everybody drops Flavia’s name these days.

What is going on? Even when my mother was alive, she wouldn’t be so active. You could never count on her to join us even for the holidays.

Most of the time, she made her schedule and lived her life around her husband.

“Was she alone?” I ask, baffled.

“Yes.”

“How did she look?”

My question catches her unprepared.

“Uh… What do you mean? What was she wearing and stuff like that?”