The house felt smaller the week after the restaurant. Small in the way a throat tightens around a secret: every room seemed to echo the same two names. I moved through it like someone learning to walk on a floor that might give at any moment. The ordinary rhythms—coffee at dawn, laundry, Lily’s music—didn’t change, but everything else did. The ordinary was brittle now; it might splinter with one careless word.
Lily’s remark at dinner had settled into me like grit. You two are weird lately. She’d meant it like a tease. She hadn’t been asking; she’d been registering. That keen little sister radar can be merciless. I tried to laugh it off, tried to fold it into the pile of jokes and late-night stories. But after that night in the study—after the way Mark had kissed me and the way we’d both d
