Chapter 16
NORA
My mother insisted on a family dinner two weeks after the wedding, the kind of gathering she'd always loved, long table, too much food, half the neighborhood invited under the excuse of family even when they weren't related by anything but years of proximity. I almost begged off. I had too much sitting heavy in my chest lately, too many folders full of dates and names, too many nights spent lying awake beside a husband I was quietly building a case against.
But then I heard Leo was coming, and something in me went still in a way I didn't examine too closely at the time.
He arrived a little after everyone else, the way he always did, slipping in through the side door like he still wasn't sure he belonged at the front one even after all these years of practically growing
