Ella
The Foundation gala had been the beginning. What followed, over the weeks that turned into a second month, was a slow tightening of the net that felt at times too gradual to notice and at other times almost unbearable in its patience.
Vanessa invited me to lunch again, and this time I understood, walking into the restaurant, that whatever fragile hope I'd carried about some redeemable piece of her had mostly burned away over the last month. She looked thinner than she had at the gala, the particular brittleness of someone whose life was starting to fray faster than she could hold it together.
"Adrian's barely home anymore," she said, halfway through the meal, not quite meeting my eyes. "I used to think it was work. Now I'm not sure what to think."
"Have you asked him directly?"
"
