Secrets are protected by time, and betrayed by it. I started staying late—first to check the bandage, then because leaving felt like breaking something beautiful. At home, my husband moved through rooms like weather. “Still at the old house?” he asked, eyes on the table.
“He needed help,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. It also wasn’t the whole.
“It was cracked long before your gate,” I said. We cooked together, moving around each other in a choreography anyone married a long time recognizes: passing salt, sharing the sink, pausing to touch a shoulder lightly. Sometimes that was all we did—touch a shoulder—and it felt like a symphony after silence.
The neighborhood sharpened. “You practically live there,” someone said at the market. My friend’s questions got careful. You can hide words. You cannot hide eyes that have been seen.
The Living Room Reckoning
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