Chapter 17 - Coming Home Is Not the Same as Being Home
Elena slept in the guest room.
Not because she hated me.
Because our bedroom felt like a museum of the life she had lost.
Her clothes were boxed in the attic.
Her side of the closet held my suits.
One photograph had been removed from the nightstand because looking at it hurt too much.
I apologized.
She shook her head.
“You were surviving too.”
That did not erase the distance between us.
Sofia wanted everything normal immediately.
“Mommy can sit here. Daddy sits there. We watch the movie.”
Children think love can repair time by assigning seats.
I wished they were right.
Elena woke from nightmares.
Sofia panicked whenever someone locked a door.
I flinched at every unknown car outside the gate.
We started family therapy.
I hated the first session.
The therapist asked me to describe what I felt when Elena vanished.
“Angry.”
“What else?”
“Busy.”
“That isn’t a feeling.”
I almost left.
Elena quietly said, “Scared.”
I looked at her.
She knew.
She had always known.
At the company, I announced an independent investigation into every project my father and Anthony had touched.
The stock price dropped eleven percent in two days.
Three board members wanted me to limit disclosure.
“Think about stability,” one said.
I thought about the basement room.
“No more stability built on silence.”
We released the findings to regulators.
That evening, Theo called.
“One problem.”
“What?”
“Someone accessed a restricted server before Anthony was arrested.”
“Who?”
“The login belongs to Maria.”
May you like
Maria, our housekeeper.
The woman I had trusted with Sofia.
