Muddy Waters

Stigmata

Lorraine smoothed the fabric of her dress for the third time since stepping into the restaurant, though she knew it made little difference. The silk clung in places she wished it didn’t, and the heels she’d borrowed from Rhyan were already cutting into her skin. Yet when Dwade guided her forward with a steady hand at the small of her back, she felt—for a fleeting moment—like she belonged here, among the chandeliers and hushed voices.

The maître d’ greeted Dwade like an old friend and ushered them to a private corner, the kind of treatment that came naturally to a man who seemed to own half the city. Lorraine tried to ignore the way eyes followed them, tried not to imagine what people saw: a graying, broad-shouldered man in an immaculate suit beside a short, round woman who clutched her clutch like it was a shield.

She was halfway through her first nervous laugh when a woman appeared beside their table.

“Dwade,” she purred, her voice carrying the crisp accent of old New Orleans money.

Lorraine looked up to find an elegant woman, maybe in her late fifties, draped in pearls and a gown that shimmered like smoke. Her hair was a crown of silver, her lipstick blood red. She was the kind of woman Lorraine’s characters would describe as formidable.

“Claudine,” Dwade said flatly, his jaw tightening.

Claudine’s eyes flicked toward Lorraine, taking her in with a single, dismissive glance that left Raine wishing she could fold herself into her chair. “I didn’t know you liked them so… young.” The pause was deliberate, cruel. Her eyes slid to Lorraine’s curves. “Or chubby.”

The word landed like a stone in Lorraine’s chest. Her pulse thundered in her ears.

“Enough,” Dwade snapped, rising just slightly from his chair. His voice was steel, his eyes dark. “Go away, Claudine.”

A satisfied smirk curled the woman’s lips as though she had already accomplished what she came for. With a flick of her hand, she drifted away, swallowed back into the golden haze of the restaurant.

Lorraine sat frozen, her fork trembling in her hand. The waiter set down their plates—delicate portions of lamb, roasted vegetables glistening with oil—but her appetite was gone.

“I’m sorry about her,” Dwade said softly, reaching across the table as if to touch her hand, though he stopped short. “She’s… bitter. Don’t let her words matter.”

But they did matter. They mattered because they echoed Betsy’s venom from earlier, because they slithered into the cracks of Lorraine’s self-doubt and settled there like a poison.

She forced a tight smile, pushing food around her plate. After a few strained bites, she set the fork down for good and instead reached for her glass of wine. The liquid shimmered ruby in the candlelight, smooth and dangerous.

One glass became two. Two became three. By the time Dwade leaned forward to tell her a story about his family’s old estate, she was swirling the last drops in her glass, the room swimming gently around her.

She nodded when he spoke, laughed when he laughed, but inside she felt hollow—like the wine was filling a space words never could.

And though Dwade reached for the check and offered his arm with the practiced ease of a gentleman, Lorraine couldn’t shake the thought that Claudine’s words had only confirmed what she’d feared all along: that she didn’t belong here, not in his world of chandeliers and pearls, not in the reflection of his wealth.

Not in his life.