Vanessa always smelled like expensive perfume. Vanessa’s dresses fit like confidence. Vanessa laughed at his jokes like they were genius.
So Ethan chased the version of himself that existed around Vanessa and left the version of himself that lived at home with Maya and Lily to starve.
Even now, sitting in the gutted kitchen, he had the audacity to wonder how Maya had done it.
How had she planned this?
How had she emptied a house while recovering from childbirth?
How had she disappeared so completely?
The answer came later, when his mind finally allowed him to remember the moments he’d dismissed.
Two weeks before she left, Maya had been sitting in the nursery at three in the morning, nursing Lily in the dim glow of a nightlight shaped like a moon. Ethan had stumbled past the doorway half-asleep to get water. He’d paused, irritated by the soft cry that had woken him.
“Can you keep her quieter?” he’d mumbled.
Maya had looked up at him then, eyes calm in a way that should have scared him.
