The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t escalating things. You don’t get a free pass just because you’re passive-aggressive. You can’t treat people the way she treated Jessica and get away with it.”
    â€œI agree,” he said. “I was just wondering if you planned on doing anything.”
    This sounded like Tom the Counselor, and it annoyed the hell out of her. She knew he couldn’t help it. A thousand counseling sessions on a thousand living room couches had left him sounding mechanical in conversations like these. Clinical, almost. Caroline could admire Tom’s equanimity when he used it to help other people, but when he used it on her, consciously or otherwise, she despised it.
    â€œI don’t know what I’ll do yet,” she said. “I might do nothing.”
    â€œI’ll support you either way,” Tom said.
    She knew that he meant it. Tom had never lied to her, and she loved him for it. She hated him for it too, because she knew that his utter lack of subterfuge was the result of an unwavering belief that his intentions were noble in almost everything he did. “My results might not be great,” he often said, “but my intentions are good.”
    Caroline smiled. Tom did too.
    â€œDid you know that it was Lucy’s anniversary yesterday?” he asked.
    Now it was Caroline’s turn to be surprised. “You thought I forgot?”
    â€œNo, but you usually mention it. I was just wondering if that might’ve been part of it. Maybe you were upset already?”
    â€œMaybe,” she said.
    There was no maybe about it.
    Caroline rarely lied to her husband. She might tell a small, white lie from time to time. She might stretch the truth on occasion. But she would never lie about anything significant. Except when it came to Lucy. Almost everything she had ever said to her husband about Lucy had been a lie. This too.

five
    Caroline was in her customary place, wedged between the exterior wall of the Sears Portrait Studio and the hedgerow that lined the front of the building. She was crouched between two large shrubs, her camera lens filling a small gap between the greenery that looked out onto the parking lot. Branches poked at her from all angles, but she ignored them and focused directly ahead. The van had just entered the parking lot and was pulling into the spot closest to the building. She raised her camera and prepared to shoot.
    A thin woman with dreadlocks and a brightly colored headscarf stepped out of the van and made her way to the passenger door just as the chime on the studio door sounded. Caroline turned to her left and watched as Henry Parker, a middle -aged man carrying a pet carrier in each hand, pulled the door open and stepped inside.
    She hoped Henry would wait patiently.
    She knew it was unlikely.
    Caroline turned back toward the parking lot and refocused her camera on the woman by the van. She began to shoot, switching from wide angles to close-ups, focusing and firing as quickly as possible. A minute later, the woman had locked her van and was pushing a wheelchair-bound girl across the parking lot and through the same door Henry Parker had entered just moments before. She waited another moment, to be sure that the woman wouldn’t see her emerge from the bushes. She counted to ten.
    Then it was time to go. Hurry up, in fact, before Henry becomes … Henry. She wished she could stay hidden behind the bush until Tiffany arrived, and she was a little annoyed about being left alone.
    But only a little.
    Caroline didn’t begrudge her coworker’s tardiness. For Tiffany, this was just a job. Not a career.
    This made it all the more painful for Caroline, knowing that she had graduated from Providence College with a degree in photography, and yet she and Tiffany were doing exactly the same job. And Tiffany did it better.
    It wasn’t that Tiffany’s photographs were superior to Caroline’s. At Sears Portrait Studio, there was no room for