I looked past him to the banner stretched across the living room wall. A bitter smile twisted my lips, and I read it aloud, word by word.
"'To my beloved wife. Happy sixth anniversary.'"
"You've been doing just fine, haven't you, Anthony."
Anthony pulled Victoria behind him on instinct, shielding her. His expression tightened with something close to shame.
Everyone else stood frozen. The silence was suffocating.
Six years ago, Anthony had raced onto an overpass in a downpour to make it to my birthday before midnight. His car went off the bridge and into the ocean.
By the time I got there, he was nothing but an urn.
The guilt consumed me. The grief ate me alive. Over and over, I told myself: if I hadn't made such a fuss about his affair, he never would have been out there trying to make it up to me.
The day he was buried, I clung to his headstone and cried until I blacked out.
In the years that followed, I missed him so badly I couldn't sleep. I'd go to the cemetery alone and sit there until dawn.
At my lowest, I tried to end my life right there at his grave. A groundskeeper found me in time. That was the only reason I survived.
Never, not once, did I imagine that all of it had been a scheme. That he'd shed his old life like a snake sheds its skin and walked away clean.
I picked up a framed photo from the table. Two people standing shoulder to shoulder beneath the northern lights. My eyes burned so fiercely the pain lanced straight through my chest.
"Nice wedding photos. Iceland?"
Back when Anthony and I were engaged, Victoria had been his secretary, involved in every detail of the planning.
Once, while I was agonizing over where to shoot our wedding photos, she had offered a careful suggestion.
"I think Iceland would be perfect. Every aurora only appears once and never again. It symbolizes something truly one of a kind."
Anthony had smiled at that and said it was a wonderful idea.
But not long after, I found a lipstick in his car that didn't belong to me.
I followed the trail of clues until I uncovered its owner: Victoria Mason.
I insisted on calling off the engagement. He responded by standing on the ledge of an eighteen-story building.
"Nora, if you call off this engagement, I'll jump."
My heart caved instantly. I gave him a chance to end things with her cleanly.
He erased every trace. Fired Victoria. Went to every length to make it up to me.