The phone kept vibrating beside the brass house key.
Claire didn’t touch it.
Across the kitchen table, Hannah stood with her coat already zipped, one hand resting on the back of a chair like she was holding herself in place.
The apartment smelled like burnt toast, cinnamon tea, and the sharp paper scent of the manila folder spread open between them.
Rain slid down the window in thin crooked lines.
The radiator clicked under the sill.
On the phone screen, Daniel’s name flashed again.
Claire. Answer me.
Then another message came in.
Don’t make this worse than it has to be.
Claire stared at the words until they blurred at the edges.
For six years, that sentence had worked on her.
It had made her lower her voice.
It had made her walk back into rooms where she had been humiliated.
It had made her apologize for locked doors, missing keys, cold dinners, Daniel’s mother arriving without notice, Daniel’s silence at the exact moments a husband should have stood beside his wife.
But Hannah’s apartment was too small for Daniel’s voice to echo properly.
There was no polished kitchen island.
No mother-in-law tapping her nails on stone counters.
No garage where trash bags full of clothes waited under fluorescent light.
Just a chipped table, two mugs, a damp umbrella by the door, and a folder full of proof.