Page 15 of The Weight of Her Silence
“So do a lot of divorced men.”
He didn’t respond. Because for a split second, he had imagined it. A life where Lila was just a faded photograph. A memory. A regret he could learn to live with. But that wasn’t reality. So instead, he kissed Camille again. Rougher this time. As if the right kiss could make the question disappear.
That night, Lila couldn’t sleep. She stood in the hallway outside the kids’ rooms, her fingers trailing along the walls. Ava’s door was cracked open, soft music playing from her phone. Caleb snored faintly, one arm flung off the bed like he’d been wrestling sleep itself. And then she stood at the top of the stairs, waiting for a car that never came.
Nate didn’t come home that night. And Lila didn’t even reach for her phone. She just walked quietly back to their room, curled up under the covers, and whispered into the empty dark:
“I’m sick.”
And the silence answered her.
Chapter 14
The Things We Don’t Say
He was always home late now. The office needed him. Deadlines. Meetings. Investors. Travel. It was easy to lie when the world expected so little from a man who wore a suit and carried a phone that never stopped buzzing.
And it helped that Lila had stopped asking. She no longer waited up. No more questions.
No more late-night arguments about where he’d been or why his shirt smelled like hotel soap and perfume she didn’t wear. He told himself she was tired. That she didn’t care anymore. That maybe she was seeing someone too—though even he didn’t believe that.
The truth?
He didn’t want to be the one still holding guilt when no one was holding him accountable.
Camille filled that silence. Every stolen hour with her felt like a breath in a room that had been suffocating him for years. She was wild. Unapologetic. She gave him everything Lila used to, and then things she never did. Or wouldn’t.
“You overthink too much,” Camille murmured one night, as he sat at the edge of her bed with his head in his hands.
“You always come here acting like I’m your worst decision. And then leave like I’m your only salvation.”
He looked at her, jaw tight.
“Maybe you’re both.”
She only smiled, wrapped in a silk robe, sipping her wine like she didn’t have a care in the world.
“Then keep choosing me.”
And he did. Because guilt was a dull throb now. Familiar. Easy to ignore. He buried it beneath the way her mouth felt around him, the way she moaned his name like she needed it to breathe, the way he felt more like a man with her than he had in years.
Lila
She hid the pill bottles in a shoebox beneath the sink. Not because she was ashamed, but because she didn’t want her children to ask questions she wasn’t ready to answer.
The diagnosis was official now.Cancer.Aggressive. It wouldn’t kill her overnight, but it would steal things slowly—energy, stability, strength.
Time. She had always been the kind of woman who planned for birthdays a month in advance.
Now she was writing lists for things she hoped her children would never have to read. Instructions. Notes. Memories.
She started a journal—something small and leather-bound. She didn’t label it. Just wrote. Little pieces of herself she wanted them to have.
For Ava:Don’t ever shrink for anyone. Not for love. Not for comfort. Speak louder when they try to quiet you.
For Caleb:Your softness is not weakness. Your tears are not failures. Be gentle in a world that often isn't.
For Nate, she wrote nothing.
