Claire's words didn't fix anything. They just removed the anesthesia. The numbing haze of blame and confusion—the comfortable, toxic fog I'd been living in—lifted, leaving the raw, grisly wound of our marriage exposed to the sterile air of truth. The drive home was a silent autopsy. My mind, no longer racing in panicked circles, replayed her diagnosis with a chilling, surgical clarity.
Symptom. Infection. Broken parts. I walked into our dark, quiet house, the hush feeling different now—not charged with hostility, but heavy with the grim quiet of an ICU.
Leo's door was still closed, a thin bar of light underneath. I didn't retreat to the couch, my usual bunker. Instead, I went to our bedroom-my bedroom now- and sat on the edge of the king-sized bed I had effectively exiled him from, the
