Chapter 4

The world tilted on its axis. The stinging on her cheek, the metallic taste in her mouth, the monstrous reality of her husband' s words-it all converged into a crushing wave. Sarah' s vision tunneled, the freshly painted cream walls seeming to close in on her. The air grew thick, unbreathable. She saw David' s furious face, Lisa' s triumphant smirk behind him, and then only darkness. She collapsed onto the floor, a heap of boneless exhaustion and unbearable pain.

When she came to, the harsh smell of paint had been replaced by the familiar, gentle scent of old books and pipe tobacco. She was lying on the soft leather couch in the study. A cool, damp cloth was on her forehead.

An old, wrinkled hand was gently patting her own.

"Sarah, my dear girl. Can you hear me?"

She blinked her eyes open and saw Richard Miller, David' s father, looking down at her. His face, usually so stoic, was etched with deep lines of sorrow and shame. The two workers, along with David and Lisa, were gone.

"Richard," she whispered, her voice hoarse.

"I came as soon as I heard," he said, his voice heavy with regret. "I... I am so sorry, Sarah. For what my family has done to you. For what my son has become."

He didn't make excuses. He didn't try to defend David. He simply acknowledged the horror, and in his tired eyes, she saw a reflection of her own pain. A dam of unshed tears broke inside her, and she began to sob, not loudly, but with the deep, shuddering quiet of someone who has lost everything.

Richard let her cry, his hand a steady, comforting presence on hers. When her sobs finally subsided into ragged breaths, she looked at him, a desperate plea in her eyes.

"He won' t even admit Ethan is dead," she choked out. "He' s erased him. They' re turning his room into a nursery. I have... I have nothing left of him."

"We will not let his memory be erased," Richard said, his voice firm.

"I want a funeral," Sarah said, the idea forming with sudden, urgent clarity. "A proper one. But David... he wouldn' t allow it. The cover-up..."

"Then we will have our own," Richard declared. "Here. In this house. We will honor the boy. He deserves that. You deserve that."

And so they did. It wasn' t a funeral, not officially. There was no body to bury, only a small, empty casket that Richard had arranged for. It was a memorial, a vigil. They set it up in the grand living room, the one David and Lisa had so recently violated. Sarah placed the only photo she had left, a small school picture of Ethan smiling with a missing front tooth, on a table next to the casket.

For three days, Sarah sat by that casket. She didn' t eat, she barely slept. She just sat, staring at the polished wood, remembering her son' s laugh, the feel of his small hand in hers, the way he smelled after a bath. It was a period of profound, silent mourning.

Richard stayed with her. He sat in a chair across the room, reading or simply watching, a silent guardian of her grief. He seemed to age ten years in those three days, the weight of his son' s sins settling heavily on his shoulders.

David never came. He and Lisa stayed away, leaving them to their somber ritual. To them, it was just an inconvenient drama playing out in their house. To Sarah, it was the most important thing in the world.

On the third night, as the last of the candles burned down, Sarah felt a shift inside her. The all-consuming grief was still there, a permanent hole in her soul, but something new had taken root beside it: a cold, hard resolve.

She looked over at Richard, his head bowed in the dim light.

"Richard," she said, her voice clear and steady for the first time in days.

He looked up.

"I want a divorce."

It wasn't a request. It was a statement. A final, unbreakable decision. She was done. Done with David, done with his cruelty, done with the life that had taken everything from her. The vigil for her son had also become a wake for her marriage. From this point forward, she would walk alone.