A baby outfit, maybe. Something small and yellow. She had one hand pressed gently to the side of her belly, the way pregnant women sometimes did without even realizing it, like a habit the body forms on its own.
Victor stopped walking. He stood 15 ft away, half hidden by a pillar, and he looked at her.
She was bigger than he remembered. Not just the pregnancy, all of her. She seemed to take up more space somehow, to stand more solidly on the ground.
She was wearing a loose, cream-colored top and dark pants, and her hair was down around her shoulders, which she never used to wear it when they were married because he had told her once that she looked more professional with it up.
He had told her a lot of things about how she should look. She was wearing it down now.
Something in his jaw tightened. He watched her for another moment. She was relaxed, her shoulders loose, her expression soft, a small smile on her face as she looked at whatever was in the window.
She had no idea he was there. She had no idea at all. That felt wrong to Victor.
That she could stand there smiling, entirely unaware of him, as if he were nothing.
As if he were not the man who had shaped 4 years of her life.
He straightened his collar one more time, and then he walked toward her. Elena heard his voice before she saw him.
“You look well.” Two words. That was all. But something happened to her body the moment she heard them, something that bypassed her brain entirely and went straight to her nervous system.
Her shoulders went up. Her stomach clenched. The small hairs on her arms stood up the way they do when the temperature drops suddenly.
She knew that voice. She turned slowly. Victor was standing about 3 ft away, hands in his pockets, his expression arranged into something that was almost friendly.
Almost. His eyes were doing a different thing entirely from his face. His eyes were doing the thing she remembered.
That slow deliberate look that moved over her like he was taking inventory. Like she was a property he was assessing.
Victor. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. She was proud of that. I was in the area.
He said easily as if this were perfectly natural, as if they were two old friends who bumped into each other at the supermarket.
