I didn’t feel satisfaction. I only felt sadness. Sadness for a woman who had based her entire identity on external things—a house, a name, money—that she no longer had. And now that all that had disappeared, she had nothing left. Not even herself.
Robert was worse. He tried to get a job at several import companies, but his reputation preceded him. The news of his company’s bankruptcy had spread quickly in that small elitist circle. No one wanted to hire him.
The last I heard of him was from Gerald, my investigator, who continued to keep me informed.
“Robert Sutton is working as a salesperson at a department store,” he told me. “Valerie, his mistress, left him two months ago. Apparently, he could no longer maintain the lifestyle she had become accustomed to.”
“How is he?”
“According to my sources, not well. He drinks a lot. He has gained weight. He looks unkempt. Some say he’s depressed.”
I didn’t feel joy hearing that. I didn’t feel anything like “revenge accomplished.” I only felt a kind of quiet justice.
Life had given Robert exactly what he deserved. Not by my hand. Not because I sought to destroy him. But because the natural consequences of his actions finally caught up with him. He had lied. He had cheated. He had used others. He had lived beyond his means, building a false life with borrowed money and empty promises. And now he was paying the price for those decisions.
I didn’t need to do anything else.
Justice is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is simply silent, relentless, like water wearing away stone. Not with force, but with persistence.
One Sunday afternoon, six months after Brenda left that house, we were cooking together in our apartment. She was making tomato sauce. I was preparing chicken. The radio played soft music in the background. The doorbell rang.
Brenda went to open it. She came back with a large envelope.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It has no return address.”
She opened it carefully. Inside was a handwritten letter. I recognized the handwriting immediately.
It was Robert’s.
Brenda read it in silence. Her expression didn’t change. When she finished, she placed it on the table.
“What does it say?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“He says he’s sorry. That he understands if I can’t forgive him. That he knows he ruined everything. That he’s going to therapy, that he’s trying to be a better person, that he doesn’t expect us to get back together, but he wants me to know that he regrets it.”
“And what do you feel?”
