Page 1 of The Weight of Her Silence
Prologue
Some women scream when they’re broken. Lila stayed silent.
It had been two months since Lila died. Two months since her voice was heard only through the messages she left behind. Two months since Nate realized the extent of her suffering.
And he hadn't known.
Not really. Because she had never told him.
Lila had carried the weight of his betrayal like it was hers to bear. For the children. For the image of a family she tried so desperately to preserve. While he lived in denial, wrapped in the arms of another woman, Lila folded her pain into quiet corners—never demanding, never accusing. Only enduring.
He used to mistake her silence for strength.
Now, he knew better.
She had been silent because she loved too deeply. Because she didn’t want their children to hate him. Because she believed that protecting them meant sacrificing herself.
And she had sacrificed everything.
Every smile she faked, every night she cried alone, every lie she swallowed to keep her children from growing up in a broken home—those were the pieces of her no one saw until it was too late.
Nate sat in a church filled with lilies she once loved, listening to the hushed sobs of strangers who never really knew her, and wishing more than anything he could go back.
Not to change what happened—though he would. But to see her.
To truly see her, before silence became the only thing she had left to offer him.
Lila wasn’t just his wife. She had been his anchor, his home, the mother of his children, the woman he vowed to love and protect—and he had betrayed her in the cruelest way.
Now all he had was the weight of her silence.
And a lifetime to carry it.
Chapter 1
Funeral Day
The sky was a muted gray, as if the world itself mourned alongside him. A steady drizzle misted the air, soft and relentless, like the tears he couldn’t shed. Nate stood at the edge of the cemetery, the gravel crunching beneath his shoes, but he barely registered the sound.
His hands hung limply at his sides, trembling faintly, as if his body was trying to hold together a dam that had long since cracked. The coffin lay before him, wrapped in white lilies and pale roses—flowers Lila had loved, though he couldn’t remember if he’d ever told her.
He watched the mourners file past, their faces blurred by a fog that had settled over his mind.
Each sob, each whispered condolence, echoed inside him like distant thunder, yet none of it broke through the numbness.
Ava stood stiffly beside Caleb, their faces pale and tight, like statues carved from marble. Fourteen years old, but her eyes held a hardness that made her look far older than heryears. Caleb, just eleven, clutched a small worn teddy bear — a fragile lifeline to a mother who was gone.
They barely glanced at him. Their silence was colder than the rain that soaked through their clothes. It was a silence thick with unspoken blame and unshed grief. Nate wanted to reach out, to bridge the widening gulf, but his words caught in a throat clogged with regret.
How did it come to this?he thought, the question twisting sharp inside him like a knife.
He remembered waking that morning to an emptiness in the bed beside him, a space too wide, too silent.
Lila’s absence was a void that swallowed light. He hadn’t cried then. He hadn’t cried now. Behind him, the funeral director’s voice cut through the haze, soft and practiced, reciting the rites. Nate barely registered the words, though they felt like hollow echoes from a world he no longer belonged to.
The children shifted, their shoulders tense. Ava’s jaw clenched tightly. Caleb’s eyes darted nervously toward Nate, then away. A silent war played out in those small movements—grief, anger, confusion tangled together in a fragile, dangerous dance. Nate’s mind drifted to Camille, the shadow who had haunted the edges of his life for over ten years. He forced the thought away. Now was not the time for such selfish reflections.
The coffin was lowered, the finality of the moment settling like a stone in his chest. A gust of wind stirred the leaves, and for a fleeting second, he thought he heard Lila’s laughter — light and distant, like a memory slipping through his fingers.
