Chapter Six: Choose Me
The suitcase wheels click hollowly across the tile.
Grace hears it before she sees her.
The front door swings wide, and her mother steps into the foyer in a cloud of perfume and European silk, sunglasses still on though the hall is shaded. She calls out, singsong and bright, “I’m back!”
Julian appears before Grace can move. He kisses her mother’s cheek politely, quickly, and Grace watches from the top of the stairs, stomach twisted in cold coils.
He’s good at pretending.
For three days, they try. As if nothing’s happened. As if the bed they share hasn’t been soaked in each other’s sweat and sin. As if her mother’s voice doesn’t grate against every moment they’re in the same room. Grace keeps quiet through dinners, through mornings thick with avoidance. Her moth
