The woman standing in my foyer smelled like rain, old smoke, and weeks of sleeping somewhere that did not have a door.
That is the first thing I noticed.
Not her eyes.
Not the way she kept both hands folded tightly against her stomach as though trying to make herself smaller.
Not the gray strands tangled through her hair.
The smell.
I wish I could tell you I was kinder than that.
I wasn’t.
My name is Claire Bennett.
At the time, I lived with my husband, Adrian Vale, at Cedarbrook Estate on the quieter side of Bellmere.
People called our home beautiful.
I called it practical.
That was ridiculous, of course.
Nothing about twelve rooms, heated stone floors, a wine cellar I rarely entered, and a driveway long enough to require landscape lighting was practical.
But wealth becomes invisible when you live inside it long enough.
You start thinking
