CHAPTER 2: The Woman in the Black Dress

Sloane had arrived after dinner without an invitation and with the confidence of someone who believed the house had already accepted her.
She walked through the foyer slowly, touching the carved banister, the silver-framed portraits, the antique console table where Mara kept fresh white roses every Monday.
She had practiced this entrance. Mara could tell by the way Sloane paused under the light, letting the diamonds at her ears catch the chandelier before she spoke.
The performance might have worked if Mara had still been the quiet wife Camden remembered. Pregnancy had not made her fragile. It had made every instinct sharper.
“It is colder than I imagined,” Sloane said, looking around. “But I suppose old money always is.”
Mara did not answer.
Camden did.
“This is not about old money. This is about the future.”
That was how he always spoke when he wanted to dress betrayal in business clothes.
For six months, Mara had heard whispers. A hotel suite in Chicago. A black dress at a charity auction. A woman laughing too close to Camden beside a private elevator.
She had waited for honesty.
Camden brought spectacle instead.
He brought Sloane into the house while Mara was weeks from giving birth, then told his wife to be reasonable.
Sloane raised her wine glass toward Mara’s belly.
“A child should not grow up in tension,” she said softly.
Mara finally looked at her.
“Then you should not have carried yours into my home.”