Robin, too, was utterly flummoxed. Shelly’s heroic tale of rescuing Mark at the cost of her leg was well-known in the office. But here Robin was, staring at Shelly’s decidedly not-lame leg and feeling really lost.
Shelly recovered quickly. “Come in,” she said with a placid flair, as though nothing earth-shattering had happened at all.
Arianne had to give props to the unit Mark had bought for Shelly. A wide, roomy corridor led from the entrance to a living room furnished and designed to invoke the feeling of wholesomeness and the hearth. The open-concept kitchen seemed European-inspired. The large French windows in the living room allowed one to overlook the bustling city streets outside.
Shelly poured two cups of water for them. “And here I thought Mark would rather keep all of this from you.”
“Oh, he tried,” Arianne replied flatly, taking the cup. “For that, he even started avoiding me these past few days. I managed to find out about him purchasing a unit in this condominium by myself, though, and I guessed it was for you, so I came here today to see for myself. He came home very late that fateful night, you know. Looked completely out of sorts. I bet that was the day when he finally found you, wasn’t it? So, are you gonna tell me what the heck is going on? And why is your leg…?”
Hearing how Mark had shielded the truth from Arianne invoked a flitting sense of disappointment in Shelly’s eyes. Mark had decided that the true circumstances of his birth were too shameful to be shared with the world, she realized, and so he spurned at mentioning it to anyone, even his beloved wife.
“What you see right now is what it is. My leg is fine,” she said. “I lied… But of course, you already knew that. Just like how you know that the runway disaster was self-orchestrated. Weren’t you playing detective?”
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