That night, the silence in the room felt heavier than usual. Julia lay staring at the ceiling, her thoughts refusing to settle. Was she inventing a narrative? Was this just a misunderstanding? Maybe she had pushed too hard—about the baby, about change, about a future he never really asked for.
But then the scent came back to her. The perfume, thick in the collar of his shirt. The look on his face when she asked if it had come from a woman. The meetings, the secrecy. The name in his calendar—Elena. That hadn’t been imagined. That had been logged.