The music sounded too cheerful for a house where they had just buried my dignity without bothering to invite me to the funeral. I could hear it from the service entrance, that particular kind of jazz Nathan always requested when he wanted his guests to feel sophisticated. Something with a saxophone and a piano that wandered through chord changes slowly enough to make people believe they were having a meaningful evening.
The caterers moved past me carrying trays of champagne flutes, and not one of them looked at me with recognition, which told me everything about how thoroughly I had been erased from the household in the three weeks since I left. New staff. New uniforms.
New flowers on every surface. Nathan had redecorated his life the way he redecorated conference rooms before a pitch meeting, removing anything that reminded the audience of previous failures and replacing it with whatever communicated success most efficiently. From the doorway I could see the terrace.
Golden string lights. White roses in tall glass vases. A crowd of perhaps sixty people dressed in that particular shade of effortless wealth that requires enormous effort to achieve.
And there, at the center of it all, Nathan raising his glass as though betrayal were a family achievement worth commemorating. Claire stood beside him. One hand rested on the curve of her belly, the other held a glass of sparkling water, and she smiled with the cautious radiance of a woman who had been given everything she wanted and was only just beginning to suspect the cost.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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