“I’m sorry,” she said.
Emma nodded but did not smile.
Noah held the dinosaur keychain in one fist.
Cassandra looked at me.
“Brent is losing his mind.”
“I assumed.”
“He says you’re destroying the family.”
“No,” I said. “I’m refusing to keep financing the performance.”
Her eyes filled.
For a second, I saw not Brent’s polished wife, not the woman who looked at her phone while my daughter cried, but a tired person trapped in a life where silence had become habit.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.
“Start by telling the truth,” I said.
She nodded slowly.
Then she took Tyler home.
That night, after my children fell asleep with Grandma Rose’s gifts beside their beds, I sat alone in the living room and listened to the wind press against the windows.
My phone lit up one final time.
A message from my mother.
