Chapter 2

Back in the suffocating silence of my apartment, every object was a ghost. The half-finished finger painting on the small easel in the corner. The pink sparkly sneakers by the door, still smudged with dirt from the park. Lily's things. Our things.

I sank onto the sofa, my mind replaying a memory from a year ago. Lily had a part in her preschool play, a single line as the third flower from the left. She had practiced it for weeks. David had promised, absolutely promised, he would be there.

He never showed up.

I remember Lily' s face, her lower lip trembling as she scanned the audience, her bright eyes searching for the one person who wasn' t there. She just wanted her dad. She wanted her dad to see her be a flower. That' s all a five-year-old wants. The simple presence of the people she loves.

That was the day the beautiful lie I' d been telling myself began to crack. The lie that David, despite his ambition and his long hours at the firm, still put his family first. The trial hadn't just shattered that lie; it had ground the pieces into dust.

I had called him that night, after the play, my voice tight with disappointment.

"It was just a silly school play, Sarah," he had said, his tone dismissive, impatient. "I had a critical client dinner. My work pays for that school, you know."

His work. It was always his work.

The day of the accident, the memory I tried to suppress every second of every day, forced its way to the surface. It was a sunny afternoon. We were leaving the park. Lily was just a few feet ahead of me, chasing a butterfly that had fluttered past the gate.

I had her hand a second before. I let go so she could point at the butterfly.

"Look, Mommy! So pretty!"

Those were her last words.

I saw the car. A flash of silver, moving too fast. I screamed her name. There was a sickening thud. A sound that I will hear in my nightmares for the rest of my life.

The world tilted. I ran to her, my own screams echoing in my ears. I knelt on the asphalt, gathering her broken little body into my arms. Blood. So much blood.

I fumbled for my phone, my fingers slick and shaking. I dialed David.

Voicemail.

"David, it's Lily! There's been an accident! Oh God, David, please, pick up!"

I called again. Voicemail.

And again. And again.

At the hospital, the doctors with their sad eyes and gentle hands couldn't save her. I sat in a sterile, white room, holding my daughter's cold hand, and I kept calling my husband. Each ring was a new wave of desolation, a confirmation of my utter aloneness.

He finally arrived two hours later. He walked into the room, his hair perfectly in place, his suit immaculate. He didn't look at me. He didn't look at Lily's small, still form under the white sheet.

His first words were not, "How is she?" or "What happened?"

His first words were, "Is there going to be a lawsuit? Who was it?"

I stared at him, my mind unable to process the question.

"I was in a critical meeting," he offered, a pathetic, hollow excuse.

It was a lie. A week later, a sympathetic paralegal from his firm, a young woman with a conscience, slipped me a note. It was a copy of a restaurant receipt. For two people. From that afternoon. The charge was on David' s corporate card. The time stamp was fifteen minutes before the accident.

The restaurant was on the other side of town. The meeting he was in was with Chloe Davis.

Remembering this, sitting on the sofa in our empty home, a fresh wave of nausea and rage washed over me. The betrayal was so deep, so absolute, it felt like it had hollowed out my bones. The grief for my daughter was a roaring fire, and his lies were the gasoline he kept pouring on it.

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. My throat was tight, my chest constricted. I was drowning in the memory, silenced by the sheer magnitude of his cruelty.