Page 23 of The Weight of Her Silence
If you’re reading this, it means I didn’t get the chance to say everything I needed to while I was still with you…
Her handwriting trembled. But her resolve didn’t. Because while Nate juggled secrets and sin…
Lila was quietly preparing to let go.
Chapter 20
Fading Quietly
The sickness crept in the way sadness often does—quietly, without fanfare. First, it was fatigue. A bone-deep exhaustion she couldn’t explain, no matter how much she slept. Then came the dull ache in her lower back, the faint nausea that lingered long after breakfast. Small things, manageable things. She told herself it was stress.
She didn’t have time to be unwell. There were lunches to pack, permission slips to sign, a household to run.
A husband to wait for.
But even as she smiled for the kids, even as she folded the laundry and answered emails and kept the house moving like clockwork, something inside her was dimming.
Her body was trying to tell her something. And she was starting to listen. It wasn’t that she stopped loving Nate.
It was that she no longer recognized the man she had built a life with. He came home later and later. His excuses were smooth, predictable—traffic, work, deadlines. She neverchallenged him. She stopped needing confirmation for what her gut had already screamed at her months ago.
He had left her long before he ever physically walked out the door. Emotionally, she had been alone for a long time. So she started drifting too.
She skipped family dinners. Let the kids eat with Nate without her. When he came to bed, she pretended to be asleep. When he kissed her cheek in the morning, she barely reacted. She wasn’t angry.
She was empty.
And it was easier to slip into silence than to beg someone to notice you were falling apart.
The letters became her outlet. She wrote them late at night, when the house was quiet and the shadows were long.
One to Ava. One to Caleb. One to Nate—though she wasn’t sure he’d ever deserve it. And more pages meant just for herself. Words she would never say aloud.
I used to dream of growing old with him. I used to imagine us in rocking chairs, watching the grandkids play. I never imagined this: loving someone who couldn’t even look me in the eyes anymore.
He tells me everything is fine. I nod. But it’s not fine. I know his lies better than I know his touch now.
Ava noticed first.
“Mom, are you okay?” she asked one evening, hovering near the kitchen where Lila stood too still for too long.
Lila turned with a soft smile.
“Just tired, sweetheart.”
“You’re always tired.”
Lila hesitated. Then brushed Ava’s cheek.
“Some days are just heavier than others.”
Ava didn’t press. She was too used to carrying her own weight to demand more from someone already sinking.
Nate
He didn’t notice the weight loss. Or the dark circles under her eyes. Or how she winced sometimes when she bent down to pick up Caleb’s toys. He didn’t see the missed meals. Or the trembling hands. Or the way her skin had paled.
He was too wrapped up in Camille, in the escape she offered. Too buried in the guilt he refused to face.
