The chaos did not leave the house when the tears stopped.

Elena came back downstairs from the master bedroom door with Victoria’s voice still sitting in her chest—the sorry is real, it has never been big enough—and found Marcus in the study with the door mostly closed. The stack of his shirts on the bed upstairs. The hollowed-out quiet in the master bedroom. The private frequency still absolute under the devastation. The thick residual claim from the afternoon already fading and the lower marks aching under her sweater in a deep continuous line. All of it pressed on the room at once.

Marcus took one look at her face and...