“He doesn’t love me,” he told her. He was crying. “He lied, he doesn’t love me.” Isabel wanted to not hear the words in the same way she could sometimes blur her eyes when looking at something—decide not to see it in full focus, decide to disengage. She swallowed and lowered the cloth from his face. All of her recoiled from the word love. She couldn’t keep the rush of sickness that came over her. She recalled: Hendrik, on the damp mossy ground, Edwin writhing over him. “It’s better like this,” she said. “It was wrong. It is better that it’s over.”
