29 days

The Clause

Elowen’s POV

The house was quiet, Stellan had left for work an hour ago, and I'd spent that hour doing nothing; staring at the ceiling, scrolling through nothing on my phone, listening to the refrigerator hum from two rooms away. My leg ached in the low, background way it always did by midmorning, and my mind kept circling back to his phone lighting up with Isolde's name before I'd even finished my coffee.

I needed something to do with my hands.

There was a stack of books in the study, ones I hadn't touched since before the accident, back when I used to read a chapter every night before bed like it was a job I took seriously. I hadn't been able to focus on a page in months. But sitting here doing nothing felt worse than trying and failing, so I pushed myself up off the couch and made my way down the hall, one hand trailing the wall out of habit.

The study door was opened a little. Stellan's study; his desk, his shelves, his framed degrees that I used to tease him about being too proud of. I hadn't set foot in here in months. There was no reason to. It was his space, the way the kitchen had quietly become mine, the way the bedroom had turned into some kind of shared neutral ground neither of us fully claimed anymore.

I pushed the door open and flipped on the lamp.

The shelf I wanted was on the far wall, second row from the top, a row of paperbacks I used to love that had gone soft and worn at the sides. I crossed the room, my footsteps quiet on the rug, and reached up for the one I remembered liking most; some old romance novel with a cracked cover that used to make me cry every single time I read the ending.

My fingers brushed the spine. That's when I saw it.

A black folder, wedged sideways between two hardcovers on the desk, half-hidden under a stack of unopened mail. It wasn't tucked away exactly; more like someone had shoved it there in a hurry and never came back to put it somewhere proper. The corner of a letterhead stuck out from the top, gold lettering I recognized immediately.

*Whitfield & Cross Legal Group.*

Stellan's family lawyers. The same firm that had handled his father's estate, his grandfather's trust, every complicated piece of money and property that came with being born into the kind of family Stellan came from. I'd met the senior partner exactly once, at a Christmas party years ago, a thin man with cold hands who'd shaken mine like he was afraid I might ask him for something.

I told myself to leave it. It wasn't mine to look at anyways.

But my hand was already moving, some old habit of curiosity that hadn't fully died even after everything, and I slid the folder free from under the mail and opened it before I'd fully decided to.

The first page was dense with the kind of language lawyers use to make simple things sound complicated. My eyes skipped past most of it, catching only fragments. *Trust distribution.* *Beneficiary status.* And then, near the bottom of the page, a phrase that made my stomach go tight and cold before I even understood why.

*Continuity of marital status.*

I read it again. Continuity of marital status. Whatever that meant, it was written right there in black and white, tied somehow to something called *Section 4.2* on the next page, which I hadn't gotten to yet, because right then I heard the front door.

Keys in the bowl, footsteps down the hall faster than usual.

I didn't have time to think. I flipped to the next page, hunting for anything that would tell me what this actually was, my heart picking up speed in a way that had nothing to do with my leg or my lungs this time.

"Elowen?"

His voice came from the hallway, closer than I expected. He must have forgotten something; his phone charger, his badge, whatever had sent him back home in the middle of a workday.

"In here," I called, because lying about where I was would only make this worse, and some stubborn part of me wanted to see his face when he found me holding it.

He appeared in the doorway a second later, still in his suit jacket, one hand braced against the frame. And I watched something happen to his face that I hadn't seen there in a long time not distance, not the careful blankness he'd been wearing around me for weeks. This was something different. His eyes went straight to the folder in my hands before they even found mine.

"What are you doing in here?"

"I was getting a book." I held up the folder instead, like it had somehow replaced the paperback in my hand. "This was on the shelf. What is this, Stellan?"

"It's nothing." He crossed the room in three long strides, faster than I'd ever seen him move in this house, and reached for it. "Just some boring estate paperwork. Give it here."

"Continuity of marital status." I said the words out loud, watching him the way you watch someone's face when you already suspect the answer is going to matter. "What does that mean?"

"It's not important." His hand closed over the folder, over mine still gripping it, and for a second neither of us let go. His fingers were warm and familiar. The same hands that used to trace slow circles on my back at three in the morning. "It's just paperwork about my grandfather's trust. Boring legal stuff. You don't need to worry about it."

"Then why is it hidden in a stack of books instead of in your filing cabinet with everything else?"

Something flickered across his face, then it was gone before I caught it. "It's not hidden…I just hadn't filed it yet."

"Stellan."

"Elowen, it's nothing." His voice had that careful, even tone he used when he was trying to sound calm and wasn't quite managing it. "I promise you, it's just family stuff. Boring, complicated family stuff that has nothing to do with you or me or any of this."

"Then let me read it."

"There's nothing to read." He tugged, gently but firmly, and this time I let the folder go, mostly because I could see in his eyes that he wasn't going to explain himself standing here, no matter how long I held onto a piece of paper. "I'll explain it to you properly…later. Not like this, standing in a doorway with you looking at me like I've done something wrong."

"Haven't you?"

He didn't answer that. He just closed the folder, pressed it flat against his chest like it was something worth protecting, and looked at me for a long moment that felt heavier than anything he'd said all morning.

"I have to get back to the office," he said instead. "We'll talk tonight. I promise."

He turned and walked out before I could say another word, folder tucked tight under his arm, footsteps already fading back down the hall toward the kitchen first; maybe to take what he had forgotten then the front door. I heard it open and close. The lock turning, even though I was still home, which felt like its own kind of answer.

I stood there in the study, the old paperback still sitting untouched on the shelf, and stared at the empty space on the desk where the folder had been.

*Continuity of marital status.*

Whatever it meant, he hadn't wanted me anywhere near it. And the way his hands had shaken just slightly closing it shut told me it wasn't nothing at all.