Chapter 27
The Questions We’re Afraid to Ask
A va heard the silence before she stepped through the front door. It wasn’t the peaceful kind. Not the comfortable quiet of a house where people were resting, or reading, or safe. It was the brittle, suffocating kind—like the whole place had stopped breathing.
She dropped her backpack by the stairs, shrugged off her coat, and paused to listen.
Nothing.
No hum of the TV.
No distant clatter in the kitchen.
No soft coughs from upstairs and then—Caleb’s door shut.
Softly. Deliberately.
She climbed the stairs slowly, her footsteps sinking into the carpet. Her brother was lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling with his headphones on. But she knew the music wasn’t playing. She knew that blank look. She’d worn it herself lately.
“Hey,” she said, standing in the doorway.
He didn’t look at her.
She came in anyway.
“Did he lie to you too?” Caleb asked, barely above a whisper.
Ava froze. “What?”
Caleb sat up now, pulling the headphones from his neck.
“Dad.
Did he ever lie to you about where he was?”
Ava felt a chill spread through her chest, icy and slow.“What are you talking about?”
He shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter.”
But it did.
Ava could feel it—something important had cracked. Something in her brother that had once believed their father was a man of his word.
“I don’t know what he tells you,” Caleb added.
“But I think he’s hiding something. I think he’s been hiding it for a long time.”
She wanted to brush it off. He was just a kid.
Just confused.
But he wasn’t wrong. She had noticed the same things. The late nights. The hollow excuses. The strained look in their mother’s eyes whenever Nate walked into the room.
The way Mom smiled less.
Talked less.
How she never asked Nate where he had been. As if she didn’t want to know the answer.
Ava sat down beside Caleb, silent. Maybe she didn’t want to know either.
“Today,” Caleb added after a long pause, “he said he had a client meeting. But his jacket was in the kitchen. His car didn’t move. And he came out of the garage like he’d been hiding.”
Ava’s stomach turned. “Are you sure?”
“I waited,” Caleb said.
“I watched.
He’s lying.”
There was a smallness in his voice that made her ache. Like this was the moment something collapsed inside him.
“I hate him,” he whispered.
“No, you don’t,” Ava said softly, but her voice trembled.
He didn’t answer.
Neither of them moved for a while.
Nate
When Ava came to him later that night, Nate was in his study, pretending to work. He hadn’t truly focused in days. Everything he touched turned to dust.
The numbers didn’t make sense anymore. The weight in his chest hadn’t left since Lila had started looking at him like a stranger.
“Can we talk?” Ava asked, standing in the doorway, arms crossed.
Nate looked up and nodded.
“Of course.”
She didn’t sit.
“Are you having an affair?”
The question hit him like ice water.
“What?” he said, too fast.
“I’m not stupid,” Ava said.
“You’ve been distant. Mom’s been... sad and Caleb—he noticed something. And now I’m noticing it too.”
Nate stood slowly, hands up.
“Ava, you don’t understand—”
“Then explain it to me.”
She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t yelling. She was doing something much worse
She was calm.
“Your mom is going through something difficult,” Nate began, swallowing guilt like bile.
“And I’ve been under pressure at work. I’ve made mistakes, but I’m not—this isn’t about an affair.”
It was a lie that tasted bitter.
Ava’s eyes narrowed.
“You didn’t say you weren’t. You just said this isn’t about an affair.”
Nate flinched. “I’m doing my best.”
She shook her head.
“No, you’re doing your best to pretend you’re still the man we used to trust.”
And then she turned and walked out, leaving the door open, the air thick with everything he couldn’t say.
Lila
From the window upstairs, Lila watched her daughter walk down the hall and close her door. She didn’t know the words exchanged but she saw the look in Ava’s eyes.
It was the same one she saw in her own reflection more and more these days. Something was breaking.
Quietly.
Permanently and maybe it had been for a long time.