Chapter 31
Cracks in the Frame
I t started with a photograph. Ava was in the office, pretending to look for old family vacation pictures to use for a school project. She needed an excuse. A reason to comb through drawers and files that hadn’t been touched in months. Maybe years.
She knew what she was really searching for: something to explain the sick feeling in her gut. Something to validate the whispers in her mind she didn’t want to believe.
Then, beneath a thick pile of pictures, she found one that didn’t belong.
It was tucked between vacation shots, creased at the edges. A picture of her dad and a woman she didn’t recognize.
They were sitting at a bar. Dim lighting. Close together.
Too close.
Ava froze.
The woman—long hair, painted smile, hand resting on her father’s knee.
Her father was laughing in the photo. Not the way he laughed with them at home. It was looser. Younger. Intimate.
Her stomach twisted.
She didn’t know how long she sat there staring, the photograph burning in her fingers.
Then she heard a shuffle behind her.
Caleb.
Her brother stood in the doorway, chewing on a granola bar, brow furrowed.
“What’s that?”
She didn’t hide it fast enough. He walked in, plopped beside her. His eyes fell to the picture. His chewing slowed.
“Who's that?” he asked again, voice quieter now.
“I don’t know,” Ava said.
“But it was in Dad’s drawer.”
Caleb stared at the photo, then looked at her.
“That’s not Mom.”
“No.”
Caleb’s hands tightened around the edges of his granola wrapper.
“Is that who he talks to on the phone?”
Ava blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I hear him sometimes. At night. He says stuff like ‘don’t call right now’ and ‘I’ll see you later.’ He sounds different.”
Ava felt something cold settle in her chest.
“He lied to me,” she whispered.
“What do we do?” Caleb asked.
Ava didn’t answer for a long time. Then she slipped the photo into her hoodie pocket.
“We keep looking.”
◆◆◆
Later that night, when Nate was out “meeting a client,” Ava and Caleb crept into the office again.
They found a second phone. It was hidden in the back of the desk drawer under some old receipts.
It wasn’t locked.
The messages were still there. Most were from someone saved as C .
A hotel room number.
A blurred picture.
A voice memo Ava didn’t dare play aloud.
She didn’t cry. Not then.
Caleb sat beside her, silent. He didn’t ask what it meant. He already knew.
“I hate him,” Caleb said suddenly.
His voice cracked, and he blinked fast, like he didn’t mean to say it out loud.
Ava didn’t say she hated him too. She didn’t need to.
She just reached over and took his hand. They sat there in silence, staring at a truth they could no longer unsee.
The picture.
The phone.
The messages.
It wasn’t suspicion anymore. It was proof.
Their father was not the man their mother believed him to be and now, nothing in their house felt safe.
Not even the silence.
Ava sat cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, laptop open, a worn leather journal from her mother’s desk resting beside her. Caleb was curled up on the rug, chin on his knees, watching her.
“You’re sure this isn’t wrong?” he asked quietly.
Ava didn’t look away from the screen.
“It’s already wrong. We’re just… finding out how much.”
Caleb hesitated.
“Do you think Dad’s cheating?”
Ava didn’t answer right away. She clicked through the search history, her stomach knotting tighter with each entry. Camille.
That name again. Attached to emails, calls, and even a hotel booking a few months ago.
“I think something’s happening. And I think Mom knows.”
Caleb rubbed his face. He looked younger than eleven just then—scared, like a kid trying to hold back tears.
“She doesn’t smile anymore.”
“No,” Ava said. “She doesn’t.”
She closed the laptop and looked at her little brother.
“We have to be careful. We don’t tell anyone yet.”
Caleb nodded.
“But what are we looking for?”
Ava picked up their mom’s journal again, flipping to the last page Lila had written on. It wasn’t filled with rage or questions.
It was soft.
Quiet.
A few lines written in delicate script.
“One day, they’ll know. Maybe not now, maybe not even soon. But one day, they’ll understand that I tried to protect them… even from me.”
Ava’s throat tightened.
She blinked hard.
They were losing her, weren’t they?
Before she could say it aloud, the sound came.
A thud.
A crash.
Then silence.
Ava and Caleb locked eyes. And then they ran.