So, I send updates. I never push; never ask why she had stopped coming to the house. Never even dare to broach the subject of Brandon.
Never expect anything back.
Chapter 48
Claire
It only took a few days for me to go back to the house, and the shift inside it was impossible to ignore.
When I walked in after school, I expected Lily to barrel into me the way she always did. Instead, she veered left, straight into Ethan’s arms, waving something clutched in her tiny hand.
“Look! Uncle Ethan made me a smiley face!”
Ethan scooped her up effortlessly, and Lily beamed up at him, proud of the little note he had drawn inside her lunchbox.
I stopped in the doorway, watching them.
It didn’t surprise me. I had known this caring side of him when we were kids. It still… gave me pause.
He set Lily down gently, ruffling her hair, and she skipped off toward her room. For a moment, I stood there, trying to figure out when exactly this version of him had appeared, mature and patient.
Later, I was rinsing a bowl at the sink while Ethan wiped down the counter. We worked in a quiet, almost domestic rhythm thatI didn’t know what to do with. It felt familiar but not. Safe but not.
Thenotmade my stomach tighten for reasons I didn’t want to examine.
I risked a sideways glance at him. “You’ve been doing… a lot.”
It came out more judgmental than I had intended.
He didn’t get defensive.
He just shrugged, eyes still on the counter. “I’m trying. I don’t want to be a burden on Mom.”
The vindictive part of me wanted to asksince when.
I looked at him a little longer than I meant to, long enough that he finally glanced up, meeting my eyes for a second before looking away again.
There was an apologetic air between us.
Something was different.
A quiet acknowledgment. A shift I hadn’t expected.
A tiny crack in walls I had held up for years.
I could admit that he was trying.
???
I was running late.
I had meant to leave half an hour ago. I’d already said goodnight, picked up my bag, and grabbed my keys. But Lily had insisted on “one more picture,” and then Emma needed help with her tea,and then I couldn’t find my phone, and somehow the minutes slipped past me.
By the time I finally headed toward the door, the house had gone strangely quiet.
Too quiet.
I paused.
