Surviving Valencia Read Online Free Page B

The strange thing is that this is what stood out to me, this is what I dwelled upon in those first moments after seeing the photos: “Some poor person with out of date technology is trying to blackmail Adrian.”
    Another thought instantly followed: Was the food for thought meant to imply that an affair had not started, but that Adrian should consider it? Were these photos sent by the woman, and she was trying to offer herself to him? Why would anyone send pictures to his house? Wasn’t it too risky? Perhaps the photos were sent by someone knowing I would intercept them. Some troublemaker.
    My head was swimming in confusion. I needed someone to talk to. Adrian was who I turned to for everything, and without him as an option I was alone. I needed a friend, but I could think of no one. So many of my friendships depended upon me being Adrian’s wife, or upon me being the kind of person who would be Adrian’s wife. They were the kind of friendships that looked like pages torn from an Elle Décor magazine. Elegant gatherings at barnwood tables beneath small twinkling white lights. If children were invited it was only to picturesquely capture fireflies in mason jars. These were not friendships with room for weighty problems. They were friendships of class and casual sophistication, honoring the unspoken code of We Shall Not Be Flawed. I considered seeking out a priest or some other religious person.
    Instead I put the photos back in the envelope and slid them into a big decorating book on a shelf in the hallway. I thought I would come up with a plan.
    That was January.
    I thought if I slept on it, I would work it all out. But for the weeks following this I could barely sleep at all. My mind raced as I lay still beside Adrian. So many times I almost asked him, almost showed them to him. He did not seem to notice that I had not slept in weeks, which I appreciated. He is good at taking me at face value. He doesn’t usually ask if anything is wrong, and if I tell him I am fine, he simply believes me. It’s such a masculine trait.
    Of course, I did not stop thinking of the pictures, even when the sleep came back in early February, hitting me in heavy twelve hour waves which he also did not find peculiar. I slept and slept, dreaming bad dreams of him cheating on me with everyone I had ever known.
    What I have finally taken the pictures to mean is not necessarily that my husband was having an affair, but that someone wants to upset him. Threaten him. Scare him, blackmail him. Or maybe it was nothing: Just some lonely person trying to bring drama into an empty life by creating a façade of connection to someone important.
    I continued to wish I had someone I could talk to about it, but there was no one, and the days rolled by as they always have. I waited for something else to happen. Something terrible. And then, of course, more did happen. But for quite some time Adrian was just Adrian, proving to me again and again in his ordinary actions that nothing was wrong, proving to me that if something truly was wrong, he was not the catalyst. When he got excited over some fancy cheese spread from the grocery store, for instance, it made me feel safe and reassured me that he was not the enemy. No one to blame could care so strongly about cheese spread, I reasoned.
    And the pictures stayed between the pages of Shabby Chic for Modern Homes where I occasionally visited them when I was alone.

Chapter 7
     
    The great thing about Valencia was that she was an excellent braider. She could French braid my hair into two tight pigtails in under three minutes. She knew tricky braids too. Fishtail braids and braids using four strands. Braids that curled around my head and supposedly made me look Swedish. Princess Leia donut braids and sideways braids that ended in a ponytail behind one ear.
    She had a brush with a faux tortoise handle she started with, brushing my hair until it was perfectly smooth. It never hurt when she brushed it. Now I sometimes