There is something almost childlike in the question. Not innocence. Shock at discovering the universe may not, in fact, preserve her accessories through moral weather.
You hold her gaze.
“If by your things you mean the things he bought with money he didn’t really have,” you say, “then yes. Possibly.”
She turns pale in a way expensive makeup cannot fully hide.
For a moment, and only for a moment, you see the girl underneath the performance. Not the femme fatale. Not the chosen lover. Just a young woman who mistook proximity to power for protection and now realizes she may have been wearing a stolen coat in a rainstorm.
Do you pity her then?
A little.
But pity is not forgiveness, and it certainly is not rescue.
Teresa begins crying.
Real crying this time. Not funeral tears for appearances. Exhausted, humiliated mother tears. Because now the full shape of her son’s legacy is in the room. Not just adultery. Not just insult to family pride. But rot. Stupidity. Vanity leveraged against everyone foolish enough to love him.
“I told him to slow down,” she whispers, almost to herself. “I told him the spending was obscene. He said I didn’t understand modern business.”
You almost say, No, he said that to everyone who noticed the flames.
But there is no point.
The dead do not blush.
