He watched as she pressed her fingertips into the hollow of her throat where the silver pendant nestled, his mind slipping back, flying out through the rear window where the past was strewn like waste paper.
There had always been silver…
She had worn it round her neck and pressed it against her skin, a wish that it might be white gold playing in her eyes as her lips retracted into a begrudging smile. White gold was always far beyond his means and even farther beyond his will and it didn’t please him to imagine her eyes reflecting pleasure. One pleasure would have never have been enough. Marietta moved with the hardened grace of a governess. Her expression, always one frown line away from the bitterest of disappointments, prompting old irritations and frustrations to uncoil within him like a cobra all too ready to strike.