The words didn’t hit me all at once. They drifted through the kitchen slowly, like a faint smell you don’t notice right away—until suddenly it fills the entire room. “We won’t need you this time, Eleanor.
Just make sure the house is clean.”
Chloe delivered the line the way someone might read a reminder from a calendar.
Casual. Efficient.
Completely certain that I would simply nod and accept it the way I had accepted everything else. Her voice carried that polished sharpness she used with service workers, the tone that suggested she was doing you a favor just by speaking.
I stood at the sink holding a dish towel, drying a plate that hadn’t even been mine.
Through the window above the faucet, the backyard stretched out beneath the fading afternoon light. The grass looked pale, and the hydrangeas had lost some of the brightness they once had. I had planted those hydrangeas years ago when Kevin was still young enough to chase butterflies without worrying what anyone thought of him.
Now my hands moved automatically, like they had been trained.
Chloe adjusted the designer sunglasses resting on her head and checked her reflection in the microwave door. The suitcase beside her feet looked expensive in that unmistakable way.
Smooth shell, gold zippers, a small logo that practically winked at me. I imagined it rolling across marble floors in some glossy airport terminal.
Kevin stood beside her, thumb sliding endlessly across his phone screen.
He was close enough that I could see the small crease between his eyebrows, the one he got when he concentrated. Only he wasn’t concentrating on anything meaningful. He was scrolling.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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