PART 2
“Your sister-in-law, Selina, dropped by yesterday while you were out in the garage,” I ventured, desperately attempting to steer the suffocating atmosphere toward something warmer. “She brought over a massive chicken casserole. Mentioned I looked utterly drained. But her tone was so gentle… like she genuinely gave a damn. She even folded an entire basket of laundry.”
“Yeah,” Julian murmured, an uncharacteristic, eerie softness suddenly seeping into his tone. “Selina has always been sweet like that.”
“Rowan hit the jackpot,” I chimed in, referencing his younger sibling. “She’s absolute perfection.”
“Mm. Jackpot.”
Julian didn’t even bother lifting his eyes from the glowing phone screen.
On my way toward the entrance to wrestle Leo into his velcro sneakers, my gaze accidentally collided with the hallway mirror.
I froze. The hollow figure staring back was an utter stranger to me.
She was wrapped in a faded gray hoodie smeared with a dingy yogurt stain. Her hair was bound in yesterday’s chaotic ponytail, anchored only by sheer desperation and dry shampoo. Dark, bruised circles hollowed out her sunken eyes.
Once upon a time, that frame belonged to a vibrant, razor-sharp woman who strutted in high-end heels to late-night dinners. A woman who would slick on crimson lipstick merely to carry out the trash, simply to feel alive. A woman who closed six-figure marketing deals without skipping a single beat.
That woman was still buried somewhere inside me. Perhaps asleep. Or maybe, slowly suffocating.
Just as I unlatched the front door and felt the biting morning air slap my cheeks, Julian’s voice cut through from the kitchen.
“Hey, Sloan? Make sure you swing by the dry cleaners for my suits on your drive back. Got an important networking meet tomorrow.”
I halted right at the threshold. Dry cleaning? Our bank account couldn’t tolerate dry cleaning right now. And since when did he go ‘networking’ on a Thursday morning?
“Sure, Julian,” I called back, keeping my pitch even.
But as I secured the children into their minivan seats, an icy, ominous knot of paranoia wrapped tightly around my heart.
