Chapter Two — Silent Cracks

Cracks don’t announce themselves.

They creep.

Quietly.

Subtly.

Stealing the foundation grain by grain until one day you realize the entire structure has begun to tilt.

For Amara, the cracks began with Caleb’s tired eyes.

He started coming home later — first an hour, then two. He’d crawl into bed past midnight, still smelling faintly of a cologne she didn’t recognize. When she would kiss him goodnight, he would turn his head slightly so her lips found his cheek instead of his mouth.

“Long day?” she always asked.

He’d reply with a smile that never reached his eyes. “These new clients are killing me.”

She believed him.

Wanted to believe him.

Until things began to shift further.

He stopped bringing his phone into the bedroom, claiming his boss could call at any hour. He changed his lock screen to a passcode she didn’t know. A small gesture with big implications.

One evening, she found him snapping his laptop shut the moment she walked into the room.

“You scared me,” he said, too quickly.

“I said your name twice,” she replied softly.

He laughed, but it was brittle. “Just tired.”

Tired.

Always tired.

But Amara didn’t press further. She was eight months pregnant, swollen, sore, and exhausted. She didn’t want to seem paranoid or clingy. She didn’t want to be the reason he felt suffocated.

Yet the feeling gnawed at her — that the man she loved was slipping through her fingers grain by grain.

The fourth such night came on a Saturday.

She had prepared dinner — a simple pasta dish, because her back couldn’t tolerate standing longer than twenty minutes at a time — and set candles on the table because she needed something normal, something intimate. Something that reminded her that marriage could survive busy seasons.

Caleb walked in two hours late.

“I texted,” he said when he saw the cold meal waiting.

He hadn’t.

His shirt was wrinkled, hair mussed, smelling faintly of perfume she didn’t wear.

He kissed her cheek and moved toward the shower. She touched his arm gently.

“Hey… I miss you.”

He froze.

Then forced a smile. “I’m right here.”

But he wasn’t.

Not really.

 

That Tuesday was when the cracks widened.

Amara had taken the day to work from home. Her ankles were swollen, and her doctor recommended occasional rest days. Caleb rushed out early for a “breakfast meeting,” accidentally leaving his phone on the kitchen counter.

It buzzed once. She ignored it.

It buzzed again. And again. And again.

Then the screen lit with a name she had heard too many times:

Serena Vale.

At first she didn’t touch the phone. She wasn’t a snooper.

She wasn’t insecure.

But something primal inside her whispered.

A warning.

A dread.

On the fifth buzz, her resolve shattered.

The preview message read:

Miss you already. I didn’t want you to leave this morning.

Amara froze.

When the phone buzzed again, her fingers moved before her mind did.

She entered a passcode — Caleb’s birthday. It unlocked. The ease of it stung.

The messages opened. Lines upon lines of secrets flooded forth.

She doesn’t suspect anything.

I love waking up next to you.

I can’t wait for our life together.

Once the baby comes, we’ll finally be free.

Free from what?

From her?

Amara’s breath fractured.

Her pulse pounded in her ears.

Her vision blurred.

The kitchen spun as she scrolled through worlds she had never known existed.

A year.

They’d been together for a year.

A door opened. Caleb stepped inside.

And the life she thought she had built — the one she imagined would hold forever — shattered silently at her feet.