Chapter 1

By the time the plane landed in New York, the sky outside the window had already gone dark.

I walked out of the arrivals gate in a daze, dragging my suitcase behind me, and saw Clara and Vincent almost at once.

They stood among the crowd near the exit, keeping a careful distance from each other.?

Clara wore a beige trench coat and held a cup of hot coffee in one hand.

Her eye makeup was heavier than usual, but I could still tell at a glance that she had been crying.

Vincent did not rush toward me the way he used to.

He adjusted his expression into the most natural smile he could manage, then pulled a bouquet from behind his back.

“Nora, welcome home.”

When he handed me the flowers, both Clara and I froze.

They were white roses.

Clara loved white roses, while I had always liked baby’s breath.

In all the years we had been together, Vincent had never once gotten it wrong.

Every year before my birthday, he would even call the florist a week in advance and ask them to save the freshest baby’s breath for me.

Vincent seemed to realize it only then.

Panic flickered across his face before he quickly explained, “My assistant must have bought the wrong bouquet. I was in a hurry and didn’t look closely. Take these for now. I’ll get you a bigger one later.”

I didn’t call him out.

I only took the flowers and said softly, “It’s fine.”

Clara stepped forward to take my suitcase.

“Are you tired from the flight? I made your favorite tomato shrimp soup. It’ll be ready when we get home.”

Her voice sounded the same as always, even gentler than usual.

Yet when I looked at the hand she reached toward me, my eyes dropped to her wrist before I could stop myself.

The silver bracelet was still there.

It rested against her pale wrist, delicate and still, exactly like the one I had seen in the Instagram video.

In the past, I would have thrown myself into Clara’s arms the moment I saw her. But the post I had seen on the plane kept replaying in my head, again and again, until all I could do was force out a smile.

The ride home from the airport was unbearably quiet.

Vincent drove.

Clara sat in the back.

I sat in the passenger seat with the bouquet of white roses in my arms, and the thorns seemed to press into my palms.

There was a faint smell of perfume in the car.

It was the perfume Clara always wore.

I had bought it for her once because I thought it suited her.

At the time, she had complained that it was too expensive and said she was not going on dates anyway, so there was no need to be so particular.

A few days after I left for my business trip, when we were on a video call, I noticed she had started wearing it.

Back then, I even teased her for finally learning how to be a little vain.

Now, looking back, it had never been for herself.

It had been for Vincent.

The air conditioning was also set several degrees warmer than usual.

Clara was afraid of the cold.

Whenever she rode in the car, Vincent would turn the temperature up for her.

When Vincent and I had first started dating, I had once joked that he was more attentive than most men.

He had touched my head then and said, “Your family is my family. Of course I’ll take care of her.”

The memory suddenly cut deeper than it should have.

Vincent tried to talk to me several times.

“Did everything go smoothly in Sicily?”

“Did you eat on time these past six months?”

“You’ve lost weight.”

But every time he spoke, his eyes kept drifting to Clara in the rearview mirror, quick and guilty, as though he was checking whether she was all right and whether I had noticed.

Clara did not say much throughout the ride.

She only looked down at her phone, and when Vincent asked her something, she answered softly, her tone polite enough to sound rehearsed.

I watched the familiar streets flash past the window and suddenly felt as if the city had become strange to me.

This city held the old apartment where Clara and I grew up, the restaurant where Vincent and I had our first date, and the theater where the three of us used to watch midnight movies together.

But now every road felt as though it had been rewritten.

When we got home, Clara quickly went into the kitchen to warm up the soup.

Vincent took a call and stepped out onto the balcony, his voice low as he talked about work.

I was left alone in the living room.

I stood there for a long time, holding the bouquet of white roses, before finally setting it down on the coffee table.

The flowers were beautiful.

They just weren’t meant for me.

I dragged my suitcase back to my room, closed the door, and leaned against it for a long while before I opened my phone again.

The Instagram page was still on that account with a default profile picture.

My chest hurt as though someone had torn it open with their bare hands.

I curled up on the floor, unable to make any sound except a broken whimper.

I had already read everything once on the plane, but I still could not stop myself from opening it again.

Maybe I still refused to accept it. Or maybe I needed to push the knife deeper into my own chest with my own hands before I could finally believe it.