PART 2: THE SECRET BEHIND THE SHED
The backyard was almost completely dark, lit only by the porch light and a small garden lamp near Henry’s shed. Graham walked toward the far end without explaining anything, which only made the panic in my chest grow sharper.
“What exactly did you do?”
“You’ll see.”
“I am not enjoying those words.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to.”
Then I noticed someone standing beside the shed. When the figure stepped beneath the garden light, I recognized him immediately and nearly shouted.
“Henry?”
My husband raised both hands.
“Hi.”
I stared at him in disbelief because he was supposed to be four hours away on a work trip. Henry admitted that he had driven home early that morning but deliberately kept it from me because telling me would have ruined whatever he and Graham had arranged.
My attention shifted to a large object beside the shed covered by an old moving blanket. Henry looked unusually guilty, and after what Graham had already said about a deal, that expression did nothing to reassure me.
“Did you make some kind of agreement with Graham?”
“Yes.”
Before Henry could explain, the back door opened and Marissa called for me from the porch. All three of us froze because whatever they had planned was clearly supposed to happen before she came outside.
Henry realized we were out of time and pulled away the blanket. Underneath it stood an old cream-colored wooden vanity with three drawers and a round mirror, including the small chip near the top and the scratch Marissa had made on one corner when she was nine.
I knew it instantly because I had bought it for her when she was six. As a little girl, she would sit in front of that mirror singing into a hairbrush and covering herself with glitter she proudly called makeup.
Years later, everything changed. Marissa carried the vanity into the garage and told Henry she did not want anything in her bedroom whose entire purpose was looking at her, and I had assumed we eventually threw it away.
Henry had kept it.
He had spent weeks restoring the wood, stabilizing the chipped mirror, and repairing every small piece without erasing the marks that made it hers. When I demanded to know how Graham fit into any of this, Henry admitted that helping with the vanity had been only part of their agreement.
Marissa reached us before I could ask more. She stopped when she saw Henry, then slowly turned toward the vanity and nearly dropped the cheesecake she was carrying.
“Henry, why do you have this?”
“You told me you didn’t want it in your room, Mari. You never told me to throw it away.”
She approached the vanity and rested her fingers on the old brass handle. I looked from her to Graham and demanded that someone finally explain the mysterious deal.
Months earlier, Graham had approached Henry before proposing to Marissa. Henry had not treated it as asking permission, but during their conversation he had asked Graham one unusual question.
“What do you love most about her face?”
Graham had refused to answer because he said choosing one feature would mean reducing Marissa to pieces. That answer led Henry to explain something Graham had already begun noticing for himself.
Marissa had spent years inspecting every photograph of herself. She would ask whether a picture looked okay, demand to see it immediately, or request that certain images be deleted before anyone else could look too closely.
Henry had given Graham one instruction.
“Don’t reassure her before she asks. Just love her normally.”
Then he made Graham promise him something else. If Marissa ever reached the point where she stopped checking every photograph, Graham was supposed to tell him.
“A couple of months ago,” Graham said, “she stopped asking.”
He pulled out his phone and showed us his lock screen. It was the same kind of photograph I had seen at dinner: Marissa laughing without posing, her hair blowing across her face and her birthmark fully visible.
That was when Henry looked at me.
And suddenly I understood why Graham had said it was now my turn.
