She stopped pretending after that — low-cut tops, cookies for Irvin, touching his arm. He always stepped away. Then she threw a neighborhood barbecue and invited him, not me.
“I’m not going,” Irvin said. I smiled. “Actually, I think you should.” Because I had a plan, and it worked because of one thing Vanessa never understood: Irvin had been handing me everything she gave him, the whole time.
I walked into her barbecue with a gift box. Half the neighborhood watched her open it — and the color drained from her face, because inside was every cookie, every note, every gift she’d ever given my husband, returned unopened.
Chapter 2: The Husband She Misjudged
Let me tell you about the thing Vanessa got catastrophically wrong, because it’s the whole reason my plan worked and her plan didn’t: she assumed my husband was a man who could be taken.
