Chapter 31
The house had grown heavier since Lyra’s departure. Her absence was not relief, not yet. If anything, the silence it left behind carried its own kind of weight, as though her presence lingered in the rooms she once moved through with ease. The children adjusted quickly, or at least pretended to. Bruce did not.
He was thinner, restless, his temper burning shorter each day. Ariel watched from the edges, keeping to her duties, though she often felt more like a guard than an assistant now. Every moment mattered—his tone at meals, the pacing in his office, the glass left half-finished on the table. The rhythm of his unraveling was one she had learned to read.
Still, she carried on with precision, filing reports, fielding calls, managing the details that Bruce no longer had patienc
