Chapter 2

The row house felt suffocating when Victoria finally arrived hours later.

She was still wearing an expensive-looking dark dress, though she' d thrown a cheap, familiar cardigan over it.

The faint, cloying scent of a designer perfume David didn' t recognize clung to her, a stark contrast to the stale air of their home.

He sat on the threadbare sofa, the one Ethan used to do his homework on.

"David," she began, her voice carefully modulated with shock, "I came as soon as I heard. I... I can't believe it."

He looked at her, really looked at her. The performance was good, but he saw the cracks.

Her eyes, usually so expressive when she was with Leo or Finn, were carefully blank, her sorrow too practiced.

"Where were you, Victoria?" he asked, his voice flat.

"I told you, an important work dinner. For the firm. It ran late."

A lie. He knew it. He' d heard it in her voice on the phone with Leo.

"They said it was a hit-and-run," he stated, watching her.

"Oh, God," she whispered, pressing a hand to her mouth. "That's horrible. My poor baby."

Her attempts at comfort felt like sandpaper on his raw grief. She reached for him, but he flinched away.

"Don't," he said.

She pulled her hand back, a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes before the mask of grief settled again.

"We need to make arrangements, David. The funeral..."

He nodded, too hollowed out to argue, to confront her yet. The overheard conversation echoed in his mind, a poisonous refrain.

"Family debts," she had always said, explaining their constant, grinding poverty. His contracting business failed because of those "debts," she'd claimed, debts he now suspected she had manufactured.

He' d worked two, sometimes three, jobs – handyman, delivery driver – just to keep them afloat, to give Ethan a chance.

Ethan, who worked grueling shifts at the diner and stocking shelves at night, saving for community college because they "couldn't afford" anything more.

And all along, Victoria had been living another life, a life of immense wealth, lavished on Leo and Finn.

The weight of eighteen years of lies pressed down on him, heavier than even the fresh agony of Ethan's death.

He looked at the cheap cardigan, a deliberate piece of her costume, and then remembered the scent of her expensive perfume.

The double life wasn't just financial; it was her entire existence with him, with Ethan.

A carefully constructed facade.

And Ethan had paid the ultimate price for her secrets.