I lifted the letter.
“You wasted it.”
Greg began to cry.
Real tears.
Maybe guilt.
Maybe fear.
Maybe grief over learning that the inheritance he imagined had never belonged to him.
I couldn’t tell anymore.
Sarah picked up her handbag.
Greg looked at her.
“Where are you going?”
“A hotel.”
“Sarah—”
She laughed bitterly.
“You lied to me about everything.”
“You took the money too!”
“Yes,” she said. “And I’m going to spend a long time regretting that.”
Then she looked at me.
“Beth…”
I waited.
Her voice shook.
“I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t enough.
Both of us understood that.
“I treated you terribly because I believed I was becoming part of something that would belong to us.”
She wiped her cheeks.
“That doesn’t excuse it.”
“No,” I said quietly. “It doesn’t.”
She nodded.
Then she left.
Greg watched his wife disappear through the doorway.
