Carissa poured coffee and held the phone between shoulder and ear. “Good morning to you too.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. She says you cut off her money overnight.”
“Yes.”
Linda exhaled sharply. “Carissa.”
There it was. Her name in that tone. The tone reserved for moments when Carissa had again failed to be infinitely absorbent.
“She says she and Damen are in love.”
Carissa smiled at the kitchen wall. “Did she say that before or after she admitted she’s been sleeping with my husband for seven months?”
Linda fell silent for a fraction too long.
So Nikki had not led with that.
Interesting.
“She said the marriage was already in trouble,” Linda said.
“Then she should have the courage to date after the divorce, not during it.”
“Things are not always that simple.”
“They are exactly that simple.”
Linda shifted tactics. “You know Nikki has always been fragile.”
Carissa closed her eyes.
There are sentences that can age thirty years in a second.
There it was again—the family religion. Nikki the fragile. Nikki the vulnerable. Nikki the one circumstances happened to. And Carissa, by implication, the sturdy one. The one built to carry what weaker people dropped.