~ SEASONS OF HER~

LAIRS TABLE

CHAPTER 4

For a moment, I didn't move. Didn't turn. Didn't ask.

Because I already knew that tone. The kind that came before something broke.

Something inside me recoiled.

And then, before I could stop it, I was.

It had been two years into our marriage. Back when I still believed love was something you could maintain if you just tried hard enough. Back when I thought if I showed up soft where I needed to be, strong where it counted, patient through the difficult parts, he would meet me there.

We had been good then. Not perfect. But good enough that I let myself believe we were building something real.

I was three months pregnant.

That night had started like any other.

Leo and Mark , playing around. I watched from the doorway, my hand resting absently over my stomach, thinking . This is the life I wanted.

Later, after Leo fell asleep, Mark turned to me.

"I need to run back to the office," he said, already reaching for his keys. "Forgot a file. I'll need it for the trip tomorrow."

"Can't you pick it up on your way to the airport?"

"It's important," he replied. Too quickly. "I won't be long."

There had been something in his voice. Not wrong. Just ...off.

He held my gaze steady, reassuring.

And I nodded. "Okay."

He kissed my forehead. "Get some rest."

I listened as the front door shut behind him. Waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. A minute.

Then I grabbed my keys and followed him.

I told myself it was ridiculous. That I was being paranoid. Emotional. Pregnant. But I kept driving. Kept my distance. Watched his car move through familiar streets

And then turn somewhere it shouldn't have.

That's not the way to the office.

My heart began to pound slowly at first, then harder, until it filled my ears.

He pulled into a restaurant.

I felt it before I understood it. That drop. That sickening, hollow shift in my stomach.

"No…" I whispered.

I parked a distance away, watching as he stepped out of the car. Calm. Like this was routine.

I forced air into my lungs, reached for the door handle, and stepped out.

The restaurant was warm. Soft lighting. Low music. low hums of conversation.

I saw him before I had fully stepped inside.

And beside him

Emerald.

My cousin.

They were seated close, leaning in the way people do when the world outside the table stops existing. Her laugh, the one I had grown up beside, the one I had heard at family dinners and late-night phone calls, rose softly above the noise.

I stopped moving.

The same cousin my mother-in-law adored without reservation. The same cousin I had sat across from, trembling and confessed my fears to. Every quiet doubt I hadn't yet said aloud to anyone else.

The same cousin I had persuaded Mark to bring into his company.

A waiter guided me to a seat, tucked away, angled just enough that they couldn't see me. I let him. I sat. I focused only on breathing.

When I looked up again, they were still there. Still easy with each other. Still laughing at something I would never know.

I ordered water. Not because I was thirsty. Because I needed something to do with my hands.

This was not the flirty texts I had told myself meant nothing. This was not the small lies or inconsistencies I had quietly filed away. This was a choice made in the open, with my cousin.

I had seen enough.

I pushed back my chair.

And then I saw them.

Devon walked in the way he always did, unhurried. Mark's brother. His hand rested briefly at the small of Stephanie's back as she settled in beside him.

His wife. My sister-in-law.

They looked happy. They looked like family.

I sat back down.

The tears came before I could stop them. I stood. Turned toward the exit. Walked too fast and then the collision.

A waiter. A wine bottle. The sharp, terrible sound of glass meeting floor.

The restaurant went still.

And when I looked up, they were all looking at me. All four of them.

Mark rose slowly, recognition crossing his face like a shadow.

"I'm sorry," I said to the waiter, to no one, to everyone.

And I ran.

His fist hit the window a second later. "Catherine, open the door!"

I didn't look at him. I started the engine.

"Catherine!"

I pulled out and drove.

My eyes burned. The road blurred and sharpened and blurred again. My mind was rubble, like something had detonated quietly behind my eyes, leaving nothing standing.

A fool.

I had been a fool, not just in private, but to everyone. To the family. To the world. Playing house while my husband and my cousin rewrote the story behind my back.

No wonder my mother-in-law had looked at me the way she did. The first time I told her something was wrong, she had looked at me with something I mistook for skepticism.

Now I understood it for what it was.

They had all already known.

The lights ahead shifted from green to amber.

I should have slowed down.

I didn't.

And what happened next made me wish, with everything I had, that the night had ended when I walked out of that restaurant.

But that night was far from over.