CHAPTER 2- THE NAME ON THE SCREEN

The ridiculous thing was, I couldn't even prove he had deleted a message. .

I stood in the kitchen with my phone in my hand, staring at the same conversation for the hundredth time.

Four months ago, I was worrying about labor and feeding schedules. Now I was standing in a kitchen worth more than my old flat, my whole nervous system locked onto a text that might never have existed.

Luca stirred through the monitor and I moved before I'd even finished the thought.

He was on his back, kicking the blanket off, and the second he saw me his face opened into that gummy, delighted smile that undid me every time.

"Good morning, handsome."

I picked him up. He smelled like lotion and sleep, and for a few seconds the deleted message and the hair on the collar went quiet.

"You're the only man in this apartment who still looks happy to see me."

He grabbed a fistful of my hair, gleeful.

"Ow — not very gentlemanly." I said.

His eyes blinked up at me. Dominic's eyes. The resemblance hit something tender and bruised in my chest, and I didn't sit with it long enough to ask why.

By eleven thirty I was exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with sleep.

The doorbell went — three quick presses, impatient, unmistakable. Something in me eased before I'd even reached the door.

"Nina."

She swept in with enough grocery bags to survive an apocalypse, took one look at me, and stopped.

"Oh no."

"What?"

"You look terrible." She set the bags down and narrowed her eyes. "Something happened?."

"Nothing happened."

Nina snorted — the sound she'd been making at my lies since university. Within minutes she had taken over my kitchen, fried rice sizzling, Luca propped in his bouncer making delighted noises at her ridiculous faces.

"Look at this child," she said. "The only handsome Sinclair in this building."

"Nina."

"Am I wrong?" She pointed at Luca, who giggled right on cue. "See? Even he agrees."

The warmth of it should have relaxed me. Instead it made me realize how tightly wound I'd been since I woke up — because for the first time all morning, I wasn't alone with my own head.

Nina noticed the shift the way she noticed everything. Her smile faded.

"What happened, Amara?"

I looked toward the window. Anywhere but her face.

"Nothing happened."

"Try again. I know you better to notice when you're not okay. Talk to me."

I told her. Not everything — just enough. The hair on the collar. The message that flashed and vanished. The late nights stacking up. That low, constant feeling that something had shifted while I wasn't looking.

When I finished, Nina didn't say anything for a moment. That silence scared me more than anger would have.

"Do you think he's cheating?" she asked finally.

I looked down at my coffee. At my reflection, trembling on the surface.

"I don't know Nina."

And that was the truth — the worst kind. If I knew, I could be angry and fight. But not knowing made me question my own eyes, my own memory.

Whether I was building a case out of nothing because I was exhausted and four months postpartum.

Nina took my hand. "Listen to me. You are not crazy."

"I didn't say I was."

"You were thinking about it."

I couldn't argue with that.

"Something feels wrong," she said. "Maybe it's nothing. Or there might be something, but stop talking yourself out of what you're noticing."

My throat tightened, because that was exactly what I was doing — building his defense before there was a case.

She squeezed my hand once more. "Just pay attention."

By the time Nina left, the apartment felt bigger than before — the silence rushing back in like dust.

Luca went down just after seven. I ate dinner alone, which wasn't new, and watched the clock crawl and then somehow be later than I expected anyway.

Nine o'clock. Ten o'clock. I checked my phone more times than I wanted to admit. Nothing. Just the city lights outside, glittering like nothing was wrong, and somewhere out there my husband was living some part of his life I clearly wasn't part of anymore.

At eleven forty-seven the front door opened.

My whole body reacted before my mind caught up — relief, and something tighter underneath it.

Then I hated myself for the relief.

He's your husband. This shouldn't feel like waiting for a guest who might not show up. I thought.

Dominic came in with his laptop bag, tie gone, sleeves rolled up, looking wrung out.

"You're awake," he said. Not hi. Not how was your day. Just a surprise.

"Couldn't sleep." I said.

He nodded, barely, already moving past me into the kitchen. I followed anyway.

He drank half a bottle of water at the counter, and I studied him — the sharp line of his jaw, the shadows under his eyes, darker than they used to be. A face I knew better than my own and lately didn't know at all.

"Long day?"

"It never ended."

For half a second something in his voice softened — he sounded like him again — and I grabbed onto it.

"How did the meeting go?"

The softness vanished. "It was fine."

I waited. Nothing followed. A year ago he'd have told me everything. Now I was lucky to get four words and a closed door behind them.

"You've been working a lot lately," I said, careful, testing the water.

His shoulders went rigid. "I run a company, Amara."

"I know that."

"Then you know some weeks are busy."

And just like that, it was over. That quiet click — a door shutting between us, no slam, nothing I could point to, just closed.

He rubbed his forehead. "I'm going to shower."

He left. No kiss or goodnight. Just gone.

I stood in the kitchen for a long time, arms wrapped around myself without noticing I'd done it.

I started thinking: When did talking to each other get this hard? When did being married to him start feeling this lonely — under the same roof, one floor apart?

Then something buzzed on the coffee table.

Dominic's phone. He had left it behind.

The screen lit up bright against the dark living room, and I wasn't trying to look — that's what I told myself, even as my feet carried me closer, but my eyes found it before I could stop them.

A woman's name. One I had never seen before in my life.

The phone buzzed again. A second message, stacking under the first, like whoever was on the other end had more to say and wasn't worried about being overheard.

Upstairs, the shower kept running, steady and oblivious — the most normal sound in the world.

Downstairs, I stood completely still in the dark, staring at a name glowing on my husband's phone, my pulse loud in my own ears.

Whatever came next, I wasn't going to be able to un-know it.