The house carried a weight after Lily’s almost-discovery. Silence wasn’t the same anymore—it wasn’t peaceful; it was tight, watching, judging. Every creak of the floorboards, every whispered exchange felt like an invitation for someone to notice.
Lily’s eyes followed me more than usual. She wasn’t obvious, not entirely. But sisters don’t need to be obvious. It was in the way she lingered in doorways, in the pauses between her questions, in how her laughter sounded hollow when Mark entered the room.
She never asked directly. Maybe she didn’t know what she was looking for, maybe she didn’t want the answer. But I felt her suspicion like hands pressing into my back every time I crossed a room.
That night, lying awake, I couldn’t get rid of the image of her walking into the kitchen—the takeo
