ELENA
It started three days later.
Three days of going through the motions. Not cold — not the bad cold — but something more careful than we had been. Like two people walking around something fragile on the floor that neither of them had cleaned up yet.
I had been processing.
I was still processing.
The processing had started to feel less like thinking and more like picking at a wound.
"I need to ask you something," I said. It was Tuesday evening. Dom was in the kitchen. I was at the counter. We had just eaten.
"Ask," he said.
"Before the fake wedding. Before you hired me. You had thought about getting married to satisfy Vivian before that point?"
"Yes," he said. "She'd been asking for a long time."
"And you kept saying no."
"Yes."
"Because you didn't want to."
"Because I knew
