Still, Vanessa always looked at other people’s lives as if they were display windows and she had the right to reach in.
When I married Daniel Hartwell at twenty-six, she hugged me at the reception and whispered, “You always land on your feet, don’t you?”
It sounded like a compliment.
It wasn’t.
Back then, Daniel wasn’t worth four hundred million dollars.
Back then, he was just a brilliant software engineer with a sharp mind and a stubborn streak. He worked out of a rented office with exposed brick and secondhand desks. I was there when he pitched investors who barely listened. I was there when his first product crashed. I was there when we ate Chinese takeout off the coffee table because we couldn’t justify new furniture.
I loved him when his suits were bought on sale.
Vanessa arrived years later, when his company went public and the numbers made headlines.
