After Dawn and Tilly moved in across the street, Clement started coming home later and later.
I felt sorry for him, thinking he was overworked. I'd cook dinner with my own hands and wait with Virginia for him to walk through the door. All the while, he was on the other side of that wall, in bed with another woman.
A wave of nausea churned up from my stomach.
No wonder Dawn and Tilly had always been so hostile toward me. Two months ago, Tilly had shoved Virginia off a second-floor balcony, fracturing her right leg. Virginia spent two weeks in the hospital.
I'd gone to their door, furious, demanding an explanation. They bolted it shut and watched me through the peephole, stone-cold.
I was about to hire a lawyer and press charges when the news came that they'd both been killed in a car accident.
The matter died with them. But Clement walked around like a man who'd lost his soul, silent and hollow for weeks.
I thought he was struggling with his research. Virginia and I did everything we could to cheer him up.