Chapter 34
What We Chose...
C amille opened the door with that familiar smile—the one she always wore just for him. Silk robe, tousled hair, bare legs beneath the hem. She was already playing the part.
“Nate,” she said, eyes lighting up.
“I thought you weren’t coming tonight.”
“I wasn’t,” he said quietly, stepping inside.
“I shouldn’t be here.”
Camille closed the door behind him with a soft click, ignoring the sharpness in his voice.
“But you are.” She brushed a hand across his chest.
“Because you always come back to me.”
He flinched at her touch.
She noticed.
“Nate?” Her voice was softer now.
“What is it?”
He stepped away from her.
“Lila collapsed.”
Camille blinked.
The lightness in her expression faltered.
“She what?”
“She has cancer,” he said.
The words hit harder out loud than they had in the hospital.
“Stage four. It’s... it’s everywhere.”
Camille’s lips parted, as if a response might come. But it didn’t.
“I thought it was something treatable,” he went on, pacing.
“I thought we had time. She knew. For months, maybe longer. She didn’t say anything. She was just... living with it while I—”
He stopped himself.
Ran a hand down his face.
Camille crossed the room.
“Nate, I’m so sorry.”
“Are you?” He turned sharply.
“Because I don’t think you get it.”
“I’m not the enemy here—”
“No?” His voice cracked. “Then what are you?”
Camille’s mouth hardened.
“I’m the one who’s been here. I’m the one who’s been listening to you, touching you, holding you when she made you feel like you didn’t exist.”
Nate’s jaw tightened.
“She didn’t make me do anything.”
“You sure about that?” Camille challenged.
“Because you only ever came to me when she made you feel like less. And don’t pretend she didn’t.”
“She was sick,” Nate hissed.
“While I was—God—while I was with you.”
Silence fell.
Camille’s voice dropped, low and sharp.
“Don’t rewrite this like you were some helpless man. You wanted this. Every time.
You craved it. Craved me.”
Nate looked away.
She stepped closer.
“Don’t turn me into your scapegoat just because you’re drowning in guilt. You didn’t just fall into my bed—you stayed.”
“I know,” he said, quiet.
Camille waited.
“So what now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” she said.
“You’re already pulling away. You’re standing here, punishing me for a choice you made over and over again.
But the truth is, you don’t regret me, Nate. You just hate the reflection I hold up to you.”
His stare was cold now.
“I’m going home.”
Camille’s face twitched.
“To your dying wife?”
“To my children. To the woman who gave me everything I didn’t deserve.”
“You’ll come back,” she whispered, eyes suddenly glassy.
“You always do.”
But this time he didn’t respond. He walked out, and the door closed behind him like the end of a chapter he was afraid he’d already written in ink.
◆◆◆
Ava had always been observant. She saw things in people. The tight way her mother smiled when her father was around. The way Caleb had started sleeping with the hallway light on again, like he was eight instead of eleven. The way their father came home late even now, even after the hospital.
Tonight, she sat on the edge of her bed, her laptop closed beside her, her fingers tracing invisible lines into her comforter. Down the hall, Caleb’s door creaked open.
“Ava?”
She looked up. “Yeah?”
He shuffled in, oversized hoodie drowning his thin frame.
“Can I stay here tonight?”
“Of course.”
He climbed onto her bed without asking more questions. He curled on top of the covers, and for a moment, they sat in silence.
“Is Mom going to die?”
Ava’s throat tightened.
“She’s going to fight. That’s what matters right now.”
Caleb didn’t respond.
After a long pause, he said, “I saw Dad with that woman again.”
Ava turned to him, still.
“What woman?”
“I told you before. The one with the red car. I saw them in the parking lot outside the bookstore last week. He hugged her. It wasn’t... like normal.”
Ava had brushed it off the first time Caleb said something. She’d told herself it was stress, misinterpretation. But now?
Now she wasn’t so sure.
“He’s been weird,” Ava said.
“Even before Mom got sick. I think something’s going on.”
Caleb looked at her. “You think it’s her fault?”
“No,” Ava said firmly. “No. If anything, I think she knows. And that’s worse.”
A silence stretched again.
Then Caleb whispered, “Should we find out?”
Ava didn’t answer right away.
She reached over to her nightstand, pulling open the drawer where she’d stuffed a crumpled receipt she found in the trash weeks ago.
A hotel, downtown. Dated three days before their mom collapsed. Her father had thrown it out in his office bin, not even bothering to shred it.
She flattened it out now on the bed between them.
“I already started,” she said quietly. “And I think you’re right.”
Caleb leaned in, his eyes scanning the paper.
“We’re going to find out everything,” Ava whispered.
“Even if it hurts.”
And in the heavy silence that followed, something passed between them—grief shaping itself into purpose.
Not just mourning. Not just fear. But the first seeds of a quiet, devastating reckoning.