Page 82 of The Weight of Her Silence
Caleb paused the game. Pulled out one earbud. Looked at his father with dull, tired eyes.
“Why now?”
The question hit harder than it should have.
Nate opened his mouth to respond, but Caleb shook his head.
“You were never around when she was sick,” he said. “You didn’t even know. Ava did. I did. And you didn’t.”
Nate stepped forward. “I didn’t know how bad it was—”
“Because you didn’t ask.”
The words gutted him.
“I’m sorry,” Nate whispered. “I was so blind. I thought… I thought I was protecting you all by not bringing home more pain. But I was the one who caused it.”
Caleb looked down. “I just miss her.”
Nate’s voice cracked. “I do too.”
Ava stood just beyond the hallway, out of sight, listening.
The children weren’t cruel.
But they were cautious now. Distant. Changed.
And Nate knew he would spend the rest of his life trying to earn back the pieces of himself that shattered in front of them.
Chapter 49
The Weight He Carried
Nate couldn’t sleep. He hadn’t slept much in weeks, not since the letters. Not since the truth bled through every corner of the life he once believed he had control over. Now, even silence had sharp edges.
He sat on the edge of the bed that still smelled faintly of her.
Lila.
Even two months gone, she lingered. In the lotion bottle on her nightstand, still half-full. In the cardigan draped over her reading chair. In the books she never finished and the pens that had run dry in her hands.
She had been so many things to him—once. Warmth. Laughter. Steadiness. His partner in the beautiful, quiet beginnings of their life. But over time, she had become a background hum to the chaos of his choices. Until she faded into something he didn’t look at closely. Something he thought would always be there.
He ran a hand down his face, breath unsteady.
Her last letter to him lay on the nightstand. Folded neatly. He had read it so many times now, he could recite it in his sleep.
"I knew, Nate."
"I knew about Camille. For a long time."
"I didn’t leave you, not because I was weak. I stayed because I wanted to give our children a sense of safety. I wanted them to believe in something steady, even if I no longer could."
"But I died with that secret growing like rot in my chest. Not just the illness. But the knowing. The betrayal. The ache of being invisible in my own home."
"And yet, I loved you."
That last sentence broke him every time.
