He didn’t jump. He didn’t pull the sheet up in shame. He simply looked at her with a profound, weary sadness, as if he had been waiting for this executioner to arrive. He placed a protective hand on Leo’s shoulder, a gesture so instinctual it made Clara’s knees buckle.
“You’re home early,” Julian said, his voice a low rasp that tore through the remaining silence.
Clara didn’t answer. She looked at the shoes she still held in her hand—the worn, low-heeled shoes that didn’t belong to her. She let them drop. The thud was the sound of a door closing forever.
In that clinical, white-washed room, the light didn’t feel like a new morning. It felt like a spotlight on a tragedy that had been written long before she walked through the door. Clara turned around, not toward the bed, but toward the hallway, leaving the meat and the vegetables to rot on the table. Some things, she realized, could never be made warm again.
Part 3
