“Please listen, Agnes, please listen!” Cristina began to cry, holding onto the rickety banister. “Ain’t like that at all!”
“How can you stand there and deny me? We’ve known each other thirteen years.”
“Don’t know what’s happening, Agnes, what’s gotten in to you.”
“Just the truth! I admit I blocked it from my head, but I should’ve figured out you and Norman had an affair, the way the two of you barely spoke. I should’ve recognized the sparks.”
Cristina wondered how she’d found out. “Agnes, you’re wrong! You’re so wrong.”
She looked at her best friend, best at least until now, and figured it out – Florence, 1929. Agnes had found the pictures from her trip with Norman. But that happened two years before Agnes walked into the picture. Surely Agnes didn’t know that she and Norman had resumed their affair back in ’40?
“Quit lying, Cristina! There’s no other way. You’re the woman he was with at that restaurant in ‘40. The only way you would’ve known about his broken gold watch is if you’d been there. Admit it, Cristina, admit the truth!”
The bottom fell out of Cristina’s world. Agnes knew it all. “All right, all right, you have it! It’s all true, so what’s it to you? You had your husband, you had your children, and you had your big house just off Rittenhouse Square. Now get out of my house.”
“You could’ve told me the truth at the beginning, but you didn’t. I would’ve understood before I’d married Norman. But marriage, Cristina, marriage is a sacrament, an oath to God.”
How would she handle Agnes? Cristina had always been able to steer her insane imagination away from the truth in the past, but not this time. Hopefully, Agnes wouldn’t tell her husband. That would be terrible, if Angelo found out.
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