But on this particular day, a meeting had been canceled at the last minute. And for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he felt compelled to return home.
Perhaps it was the quiet exhaustion he had been carrying for months. Perhaps it was guilt. Perhaps it was nothing at all.
He unlocked the front door and stepped into the familiar stillness of the house. The faint scent of lemon cleaner lingered in the air—subtle, fresh, almost comforting.
“Hello?” he called, loosening his tie.
No response.
He assumed Maria, the cleaning lady, was working in one of the back rooms. She had been with his family for nearly a year—efficient, quiet, almost invisible in the way household help often was. Beyond her name and her habit of arriving early and leaving late, he knew very little about her.
He walked toward the kitchen.
And then he stopped.
