Chapter 2

After dinner, Nathan didn’t drive Genevieve home.

Her car, he explained with slow, exaggerated lip movements so I could read every word, wouldn’t start.

“Genevieve will stay in the guest room tonight,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

He had already decided, speaking over me as if my opinion required a voice I no longer possessed.

When we walked through the front door, Genevieve moved through the hallway with an ease that chilled me more than any stranger could.

She didn’t look around or hesitate.

She walked straight to the kitchen cabinet, knowing exactly which shelf held the spare water glasses, and reached for the blend of herbal tea Nathan only drank when he had worked late.

She knew the cup placement.

She knew his routine.

As she passed the stairs, she paused and looked up.

“You still haven’t fixed the light upstairs?”

Nathan froze, his hand dropping my coat onto the rack.

His eyes darted sharply toward me.

I stood by the entryway, my expression blank, my fingers loosely wrapped around my handbag.

I kept my breathing steady, pretending I was trapped entirely within my silent world.

Nathan’s shoulders relaxed slightly, but the tension didn’t leave his face.

Later, as I sat on the living room sofa, pretending to adjust the settings on my phone while my backup channel remained open, Nathan and Genevieve stood near the kitchen island, talking in low, unvarnished tones.

They believed the glass partition and the distance kept them safe.

“How long are you going to keep doing this?” Genevieve asked, her voice reaching me clearly through the backup channel.

“Until after the surgery,” Nathan replied.

Genevieve took a sip of her tea, her eyes drifting toward me where I sat under the reading lamp.

“And if it works?”

Nathan’s voice dropped, flat and devoid of warmth.

“It won’t change what she’s become.”

He didn’t lower his voice enough to hide the casual cruelty beneath it.

“She can’t even go to the market alone anymore,” he continued, turning back to Genevieve.

“Every dinner party requires me to repeat every joke, every conversation, like an interpreter for an invalid. I’ve spent years living with someone who can’t even catch the tone of a room. It’s like taking care of an elderly relative who refuses to age gracefully.”

The words didn’t strike like a sudden blow.

They settled over me like dust—heavy, dry, and suffocating.

This was what he told her.

Not just that I was useless, but that my life had become an inconvenience he was entitled to manage out of existence.

When Nathan went upstairs to shower, Genevieve didn’t stay in the kitchen.

She walked into the living room and sat on the sofa directly beside me.

The cushion dipped under her weight.

She didn’t look at me with malice; she looked at me with the quiet, smug comfort of someone who believed she was sitting next to furniture.

She was marking territory in a home where my wedding photos still hung on the walls.

The next morning, the sunlight cut through the blinds in sharp, pale stripes across the dining table.

Nathan placed a thick folder of medical and administrative forms beside my coffee cup.

His fingers pressed flat against the cover, neat and steady.

“Routine forms for the pre-op admission,” he said, tapping a finger near the signature line.

“I checked everything for you. You don’t need to read through the fine print.”

I reached out and opened the cover.

From the kitchen, where Genevieve was pouring a glass of water, a low voice drifted through.

“Did you remove it?”

Nathan didn’t look back.

His voice remained smooth, dipped in that practiced, soothing tone he used whenever he wanted compliance.

“She never reads the medical paperwork. She trusts me.”

My pen stopped half an inch above the paper.

Nathan noticed the hesitation instantly.

His eyes narrowed, and his hand twitched toward the edge of the folder.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, his tone shifting just enough to test my reaction.

I forced my expression to smooth out.

I shook my head slowly and lowered my gaze, pretending I had merely hesitated with ordinary pre-surgery anxiety.

He exhaled, satisfied that his control remained unbroken.

“Just sign here,” he murmured, stepping away to answer a sudden call on his mobile near the French doors.

The moment his back was turned, I flipped the pages back.

My fingers traced the lines of the medical history section.

There, where my medical history should have warned every physician in the building, was one clean block of text:

NO KNOWN ALLERGIES.

Three years ago, Nathan had carried me out of a locked bathroom while my throat closed.

He had driven through two red lights and shouted my allergy at every nurse who touched me.

He hadn’t forgotten.

From the kitchen, Genevieve asked quietly, “Will it be enough?”

Nathan walked back, his footsteps soft on the hardwood, and placed his hand over mine, pressing the pen back into my grip.

“She trusts me,” he said into the quiet air of the room.

I looked down at the box he had checked for me.

NO KNOWN ALLERGIES.

Nathan squeezed my hand.

“Sign,” he said gently.

My husband thought I couldn’t hear them.

He was right about one thing.

Until I knew what they were planning, I needed him to keep believing it.