a good person, in her mom’s opinion. And she’d been relieved that Anna was settling down with him. Because, of course, that meant Anna would be spared the ugliness that her mom had experienced in life.
Then she’d gone and made her own ugliness.
Maybe it would be different if Michael had asked her to run away with him.
She waited for some kind of jolt of excitement, a lift in her spirit, but it didn’t come.
Honestly, that he’d sort of vanished over the revelation of the affair had killed a good amount of her elation over him in general.
Well, reality had done that.
Fallout.
And she was living in the debris.
She looked down at her hands, wrapped around the cart handle. They were bare. And it was weird how not weird that felt after fourteen years of marriage.
She had taken off her wedding ring with ease. But, then, she had taken it off multiple times over the past few months. Every time she’d gone to talk with Michael. Every time she’d kissed him.
And definitely when they’d...
She sucked in a sharp breath and forced herself to move forward. She had a list. She needed to go down the list and get the groceries. She did not need to stand in the dry goods aisle grappling with a minimeltdown. She pushed the cart ahead, and nearly into another cart coming from the left.
And she nearly ran into Laura Keller.
Just great.
Laura had been kind to her at the funeral, but that had been prior to...well, Anna becoming a scarlet woman.
“Anna.” Laura sounded surprised, but not unhappy. And that was weird to Anna. But some people were busybodies. Some people would have seen this moment as a full-fat cream indulgence opportunity.
Laura wasn’t one of them. In many ways, Laura was one of the most genuinely nice people Anna knew. But Laura was also...good.
She was good in a way that made Anna uncomfortable sometimes.
Her smile seemed too easy. Her laugh too bright. It chafed against the hidden meanness inside her, made her feel emotionally claustrophobic. The weight of pretending she was as shiny, as good, as someone like Laura, had been one of the things that had made her go so brittle over the years.
And she was sure Laura wouldn’t—couldn’t—like the person she’d been revealed to be.
“How are you?” Laura asked.
She seemed like she might really want to know.
How many times had Anna asked parishioners, “How are you?”
And hoped they’d respond with something light and generic so she didn’t have to stay and talk too long?
“Good,” she said.
Light and generic it was.
That was a lie, but it was the kind of lie that didn’t invite questions.
“I mean, it’s been very hard for Rachel,” Anna said, just pretending that Sunday hadn’t happened.
“Good. But you know, I wasn’t actually asking about Rachel.”
Anna tightened her grip on the shopping cart and for some reason became incredibly conscious of the song that was playing over the speakers in the store.
About someone saying it best when they said nothing at all.
It felt painfully ironic on multiple levels.
“I...”
“I didn’t like that he did that to you.”
Anna blinked. “I...”
“It didn’t feel right to me. He’s taught, many times himself, that you’re supposed to let your critics say what they will and you just go on. Well, he didn’t give a chance for anyone to criticize him, did he? He just handed you to all of them.”
Anna hadn’t expected that at all. Laura had always been such a sweet, sunny presence at the church and she’d assumed her loyalty to Thomas would be absolute.
Apparently not.
Laura looked around, and then she reached out, pulling Anna into a hug. “I’m praying for you.”
And, stupidly, Anna wanted to cry. Instead, she forced a smile. “Thank you. Thank you, that’s always welcome.”
She didn’t know what to do, except the quinoa in her shopping cart was looking lonely. And as Laura walked in one direction, Anna walked in the other and took two boxes of cupcakes off the bakery table. They were terrible, store-bakery cupcakes with frosting that would coat her tongue like Crisco, and she didn’t even care.
The frosting was bright red and it would stain her mouth, too. Which seemed appropriate. Scarlet cupcakes instead of a scarlet letter.
She stopped in front of a display of local wines, her heart thundering.
And she grabbed one, shoving it in her cart with everything else.
She could never have done this two weeks ago.
She made her way up to the counter and began to put her items on the belt. She recognized the cashier, but