Chapter 2

JULIETTE

Harper showed up at eight the next morning with two coffees and a folder under her arm, and she did not even say hello before she started talking.

"Okay. Start from the beginning. What did you actually find?"

I let her in, and we sat at the kitchen island while the house was still quiet upstairs. "Three nights ago, when I got back from the trip early and sick with fever, I remembered something. A drawer in his study he's kept locked since the day we moved in."

"And you finally opened it."

"I finally opened it." I wrapped both hands around the coffee cup like it could steady me. "There was an album inside. Every page was Delphine. Birthdays, graduations, a photo from before she ever met Griffin. He's been keeping it since before either of them got married."

Harper's mouth fell open. "Juliette. Please tell me you're joking."

"I wish I was."

"Wait." She set her cup down hard enough that coffee sloshed over the rim. "This whole time I thought you two just weren't sleeping together because he was stressed with work. You're telling me he's been in love with someone else the entire marriage?"

"There's more." I stared at the counter, not really seeing it. "Once, a year ago, he caught me looking at him a certain way and he told me he used a photo of me instead, to protect me from something he called himself too broken to do properly. I believed him. I actually felt sorry for him."

"That is deeply disturbing on a level I don't even have words for right now." Harper pressed her fingers to her temples. "And the cemetery thing. Who did you actually see?"

"Adrian Kingsley."

Harper went very still. "Adrian. As in Margaret Kingsley's grandson, Adrian. The one you dated before Sebastian."

"That's the one."

"You haven't spoken to him in three years. You told me he cut you off completely after you married Sebastian."

"He did." I turned my cup slowly on the counter. "So I have no idea why he was standing at that cemetery yesterday, watching me like he'd been waiting for a reason to show up."

"Tell me about it."

Before Harper could say anything else, something shattered upstairs.

I was already moving before I had fully decided to move, taking the stairs two at a time with Harper right behind me. Rosa met us at the top, her hands pressed to her mouth.

"Ms. Marsh, it's Oliver. He got into your room."

My chest went tight before I even reached the doorway. I knew exactly what was in that room that mattered, and it was not the furniture.

The frame lay in pieces on the carpet, glass scattered in a wide fan. The photograph inside, the only one I had of my parents together, had slipped halfway out and torn straight through the middle.

Oliver stood over it, one small sneaker still planted on a shard of glass, looking more curious than sorry.

"Oliver." My voice came out quieter than I expected. "Step back. There's glass."

Delphine appeared in the doorway a second later, Oliver's building blocks still in her hand like she had only just noticed he was gone. "Oh my god. Juliette, I am so sorry, I turned my back for one second."

"That photo was the only one I have of my parents," I said. "They died when I was five. This was not replaceable."

"He's four. He doesn't understand what things mean yet." Delphine crouched and gathered Oliver against her, glancing at me like I was the one being unreasonable. "You can't be that angry at a child."

"I'm not angry at a child." I crouched too, careful of the glass, and looked directly at Oliver instead of over his head the way adults usually did. "How did you get in here, Oliver? This door was closed."

"It wasn't locked," he said, proud of himself for figuring that out.

"It will be from now on." I kept my voice even. "Oliver, do you know what happens to things you can never get back?"

He blinked at me. "What?"

"They're just gone," I said simply. "Forever. No amount of saying sorry brings them back. That's why we're careful with things that belong to other people."

It was not a threat. It was not even unkind. But something in my voice must have landed, because his lower lip started to wobble, and this time Delphine did not accuse me of anything. She just picked him up and carried him out without another word.

Harper waited until they were gone before she exhaled. "You good?"

"No," I said honestly. "But I will be."

"For what it's worth," Harper said, glancing at the torn photo still lying on the carpet, "I'm sorry. About your parents' photo, I mean. Not about the rest of this circus."

"I know." I gathered the pieces carefully into my palm. "I'll get it restored. It's not gone completely. Just damaged."

"That's a very you way of looking at it."

"It's the only way that gets me through the day," I said.

That evening, Sebastian came home to find me sitting at the dining table with two folders laid out in front of me. Rosa had already told him about the photo, apparently, because he looked like a man walking into a room he expected to be yelled at in.

"Syd, I heard about the photo. I'm sorry. I'll replace the frame, I promise."

"You can't replace it," I said. "But you can make this evening easier for both of us."

He sat across from me, wary. "How?"

"Sign these." I slid the first folder toward him. "The house transfers fully into my name. I don't want to fight over property later."

"Later? Syd, it's just a photo. Nobody's talking about property division."

"I'm just being practical," I said. "You know how I am. I like things settled."

He barely glanced at it before signing, already reaching for his phone like his mind was somewhere else entirely. Guilt made him generous, and generosity made him careless. That was exactly what I was counting on.

I slid the second folder across without a word.

He opened it, signed the last page without reading past the header, and closed it just as fast. He did not even ask what it was.

"There." He reached over and squeezed my hand, something soft and almost fond in his face. "How does someone stay this calm about everything? Your brother really did raise you well."

I smiled at him, and I let him believe it meant what he thought it meant.

He had just signed our divorce agreement without reading a single line of it.

I almost wanted to laugh. Three years of being told how calm and easy I was to live with, and it turned out that same reputation was the exact thing that let me walk out the front door with his signature already on the way out.

My phone buzzed on the table between us before I could enjoy the moment properly. Sebastian glanced down at it automatically, the way anyone does when a screen lights up nearby, and I watched every trace of color drain slowly out of his face.

"Syd." His voice had gone strange. "Who is that?"

I didn't need to look. I already knew whose name would be sitting there.

The screen read Adrian Kingsley.

The message underneath was short. I saw you today. We need to talk.