For one bright, stupid second, my mind refused to make sense of it. All I could do was stare at the crystals flashing under the stained glass as she turned her head. Tiny shards of red and blue and gold danced across the pew in front of her. My father used to joke that the dress looked expensive enough to throw its own light. There it was, shining from the body of another woman while my father lay dead twenty feet away.
My feet started moving before I’d decided to confront anybody.
“Becca,” I said, the name coming out flat and strange in my own ears. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Rebecca Thornton turned around with the smoothest smile I’d ever wanted to slap off a face.
She was twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine on a generous day, and worked in marketing at Grant’s firm. I’d met her twice at company events. She’d called me Natalie in that overly warm way women do when they want credit for friendliness without the burden of sincerity. She had glossy brown hair, expensive cheek filler, and a talent for standing a little too close to married men.
“Natalie,” she said softly, like we were meeting at brunch instead of my father’s funeral. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She had one hand on Grant’s. Not brushing. Holding.
My husband finally looked up at me, and the guilt on his face hit like a door slamming.
Not shock. Not confusion. Guilt.
The cathedral seemed to narrow around me. The air smelled suddenly metallic, like a cut lip. Every late night at the office, every “conference,” every trip he’d cut short with excuses about mergers or clients or red-eye flights started lining up in my head so fast I almost got dizzy.
“Why is she wearing my dress?” I asked.
Nobody answered immediately, which was answer enough.
Becca crossed one leg over the other and gave a tiny shrug. The hem shifted against her knee. I knew that dress so well I could tell by the way it moved that she’d had it taken in at the waist.
“Oh, this?” she said. “Grant gave it to me. He said you never wore it.”
I looked at Grant.
His eyes flicked away so fast it was almost funny. Fifteen years of marriage, and the man still thought not making eye contact counted as strategy.
“Tell me she’s lying,” I said.
“Natalie,” he muttered, leaning forward like he was trying to quiet a child at church. “Not here.”