Silence greeted Olivia when she walked into the house.
It wasn’t the peaceful kind.
It was chaotic, almost deafening, filling the hollow spaces of her heart with an ache that tears couldn’t cleanse. There was no husband waiting with affection in his eyes, no familiar voice calling her name. No parents asking whether she had eaten, whether she was all right.
No one was waiting at all.
She was meant to be alone. Or perhaps she deserved it.
That was how life worked, wasn’t it? Some people were handed everything: love, certainty, a place to belong. Others learned to live with empty hands. And sometimes, if you were cruelly favored, you were given just enough to hope, but never enough to keep.
She walked into the bedroom she once shared with Clayton. Her gaze fell to the empty side of th
