The murmur of my mother’s voice drifted down the hallway, soft but edged with something sharper, something that made me pause halfway to the kitchen.
She was on the phone.
At first, I wasn’t listening. I thought it was one of her usual late-night check-ins with Aunt Marianne or maybe the neighbor who always called to gossip about her cats. But then I heard it, one word that made my stomach twist.
“Divorce.”
I froze.
Her tone had gone flat, careful, the way she sounded only when she was trying to hold something together.
“…yes, he filed again,” she was saying, her voice low but clear. “I signed my part years ago. He went completely out of touch after that. We were supposed to finalize everything, but he disappeared.”
My throat went dry. There was no need to guess who “he” was. The ai
