Constance held those images in hermind, staring through them at the wall, still able to smell the vanilla sweetness of Shalimar, which made her picture her mother, too, preparing for an evening out, back when her parents were the adults, and death and stepmothers were things that she had only read about in the Brothers Grimm.
But I knew the only thing that would make everything right would be for her husband to walk through the door right now, safe and whole in body and mind, the same man he was when he left.