A Stranger in the House

by Shari Lapena

she is only thirty-two.

The knitting and nosiness made Brigid seem older.

No one could accuse her of not being a good friend.

I could.

Suspicion is an insidious thing; doubts have started creeping in, things that he’d previously been able to ignore.

But just because she loves him, and he loves her, it doesn’t mean he knows her. What is love anyway, she thinks, but a grand illusion? We fall in love with an ideal, not a reality.