Page 42 of The Weight of Her Silence
Chapter 31
Cracks in the Frame
It started with a photograph. Ava was in the office, pretending to look for old family vacation pictures to use for a school project. She needed an excuse. A reason to comb through drawers and files that hadn’t been touched in months. Maybe years.
She knew what she was really searching for: something to explain the sick feeling in her gut. Something to validate the whispers in her mind she didn’t want to believe.
She pulled out a box labeled “2015–2018.” Flipping through, she found photos from a trip to Cape Cod, her tenth birthday party, Christmas mornings. Her mother’s smile was everywhere—warm and full and alive.
Then, beneath a thick pile of pictures, she found one that didn’t belong.
It was tucked between vacation shots, creased at the edges. A picture of her dad and a woman she didn’t recognize.
They were sitting at a bar. Dim lighting. Close together.
Too close.
Ava froze.
The woman—long hair, painted smile, hand resting on her father’s knee.
Her father was laughing in the photo. Not the way he laughed with them at home. It was looser. Younger. Intimate.
Her stomach twisted.
She didn’t know how long she sat there staring, the photograph burning in her fingers.
Then she heard a shuffle behind her.
Caleb.
Her brother stood in the doorway, chewing on a granola bar, brow furrowed.
“What’s that?”
She didn’t hide it fast enough. He walked in, plopped beside her. His eyes fell to the picture. His chewing slowed.
“Who's that?” he asked again, voice quieter now.
“I don’t know,” Ava said.
“But it was in Dad’s drawer.”
Caleb stared at the photo, then looked at her.
“That’s not Mom.”
“No.”
Caleb’s hands tightened around the edges of his granola wrapper.
“Is that who he talks to on the phone?”
Ava blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I hear him sometimes. At night. He says stuff like ‘don’t call right now’ and ‘I’ll see you later.’ He sounds different.”
Ava felt something cold settle in her chest.
