I didn’t smile.

“You don’t love me.

You love the estate, the coverage, the contracts, the head table.

When you believed I had nothing, you chose another woman and let your family treat my dignity as an inconvenience.”

I said it without heat, because by then I had thought it all the way through, and I knew it was simply true.

Ferdinand’s I still love you was not a lie, exactly — that was the subtle, awful thing about it.