Night settled over the bypass road like a slow exhale, wrapping the house in quiet shadows. The lights were warm, soft against the walls, but Olivia could not shake the coldness threading through her veins.
She glanced at the clock. Then the door. Then the clock again.
Simon had said he “might” return tonight. A vague promise wrapped in the kind of certainty only he could wield. But as the hours crawled by, the house remained unbearably still. No footsteps on the gravel. No distant hum of the SUV. No shift in the air that usually announced his presence like a storm about to break.
She didn’t know what she feared more, him not coming home, or him walking through that door.
Mae sat cross-legged on the large bed, already in borrowed pajamas, chewing the end of a pillowcase like she used t
