Hey, she thought. Wait. I… Did I do that? How the hell did I do that?

She stared numbly at the destruction while the rest of the world faded into swirls of people exclaiming and muttering in the background. Some of the dinner-party guests were slipping out the front door while others lingered to stare.

The imposing stranger regarded the fallen vase, then turned to look at her, a corner of his mouth tilting up. Against a deep suntan, his knowledgeable eyes looked yellow like a cat’s. Reaching to his forehead with long fingers, he tilted an invisible hat at her.

Austin broke the throbbing tension with a loud laugh. “I guess we should have gotten someone to fix the wobble in that vase stand,” he said in a voice pitched to carry across the silent room. “Tell you what, everybody, it’s abundantly clear Molly and I are having a rough moment. Why don’t you all head to the bar in the other room? Russell will serve you up whatever you desire while my wife and I resolve this.”

That snapped her focus back into place.

“Because resolving this should only take five minutes or so?” Her acidic retort caused his head to rear back.

“Where is your Xanax?” he muttered.

“You think drugging me is the way to deal with this?” Raising her voice, she said clearly, “The second time you cheated on me, I cried for weeks. You didn’t know I found out. I was too… something. I don’t even know what the word is. There you were, going through your life with your dick hanging out of your pants, and I was too scared or intimidated or heartsick to confront you. I felt like a failure. I thought it had to be at least partly my fault. I had fallen out of love with you by then, but I still tried to make our life together work. I’m not a quitter, I said. I would stick it out. For better or worse, right?”

As she watched, the embarrassed anger in Austin’s face switched to uncalculated fury. “You frigid bitch,” he spat out. “You don’t know the meaning of the word love. Everything always has to be portioned out with you, balanced on some kind of invisible scale. I had to earn every fuck I got from you.”

His words sank invisible claws deep and tore at her, underneath her unmarked skin. Her face burned with greater fury and humiliation.

She made her shaking lips form words. “The second time you cheated. That was when I knew I didn’t want to have children. Years passed, and now here we are. I’m almost forty, you’re over forty. And I’m looking back over the past twenty years of my life, and all I can think is what a goddamn waste, and none of it was my fault.”

He barked out a harsh laugh. “You’re delusional.”