She wished she could have said where the thought had come from.  But as she stood there in the street, in broad daylight, the only thought in her head that remained was a silent scream of humiliation.

If it had been nighttime, she’d have been able to hide the blood in her cheeks.

If it had been raining, she’d have been able to hide the fact that she wasn’t crying.

If it had been both, and storming ferociously, it would have been the moment in a cheesy, girly, chick flick that he’d have turned around, looked at her as if for the first time, and then come marching back to her.

But it was midmorning.  The sun was shining brightly, fighting a losing battle with puffy gray storm clouds, and he was staring at her as if she’d just declared her love of sandwiches.

And instead of moving towards her embrace, his wife was storming towards her annihilation.

Cassandra thought dimly about bolting away.  She thought about insisting it’d come out wrong.  She thought about a lot of things that could have saved her skin, but as Penny raised her hand without even slowing down, Cassandra didn’t think of covering her face.

The slap was hard, and sharp.  Penny didn’t say another word, assuming she’d said one in the first place when she’d been out of earshot.  She half raised her hand again as if to slap Cassandra a second time, but seemed to understand and turned on her heel instead.  Her hair whipped out behind her as she marched back across the street to the relative safety of the sidewalk, still fuming.

Cassandra sank slowly to her knees, the black pavement scalding her bare legs as she sat back on her heels.  On the sidewalk, Roger wouldn’t look at her.  She couldn’t imagine why.  Was he embarrassed for her?  Was he embarrassed for himself?  Did he want her to go away forever, or to go to a cheap motel and wait for him?

Penny clamored onto the sidewalk and took his hand forcefully in hers, but didn’t drag him away.  With a perturbed face, he looked at his wife, then at the girl in shock in the middle of the street, and tugged on Penny’s hand.  Cassandra didn’t dare think he was pulling away from her.

It was only as he and his wife moved towards their car and unlocked the doors, only as the clouds that had been threatening the sun all morning began to move in, that Cassandra’s mind began to clear.

She heard the car doors slam and the engine start.  She just stared at her hands, ignoring the traffic that had begun to whiz past her and the police officer screaming at her to get out of the street.  The day grew darker, and she pushed herself upright.  Her hands fisted themselves in her pant legs and she looked up at the parking lot, watching him flick on the headlights and back out of the space.  She caught his eyes through the windshield as he hesitated to throw the car into gear and felt the first raindrops on the back of her neck.

But she lowered her face again and he shifted into first, leaving her there.

The police officer had managed to stop the traffic in the lanes behind her, and she could hear his boots crunching on the pavement, moving towards her as quickly as the summer storm.  As the clouds won over the sun and opened up on the town, the rain hitting in fat drops on her head and her tee shirt, Cassandra’s mind offered her the one thought, the one fact, that she had been refusing to see all along.

The officer hooked a strong arm around her middle and hefted her to her feet.  She covered her mouth with her hands and let the rain beat her words and her dreams to dust on the pavement.