Chapter 65: The Empty Space
The house was too quiet without Lily.
Maya noticed it the second she walked through the door. The silence pressed in on her, thick and heavy. No footsteps on the stairs. No music drifting from Lily's room. No laughter from the kitchen. She stood in the hallway, listening to the nothing, and felt the weight of it settle into her bones. It was the same feeling she'd had when Knox had been gone, when the bar had been empty, when she'd been alone in her own head. It was the feeling of absence, of space where there had been presence. The air felt different, thinner somehow, like the house was holding its breath. She could hear the refrigerator humming, the clock ticking, the distant sound of a truck on the highway. But the sounds that mattered—the sounds that made
