About

The kitchen counter is cold under your fingertips as you reach for a glass of water. That's when her phone screen flares to life, a notification cutting through the silence like a knife. The words burn into your retinas before you can look away. Passionate. Intimate. Words your mother should only say to your father. But the name at the top isn't his. Your heart pounds as footsteps echo from upstairs. She's coming down. The phone sits there like a loaded gun, and you're frozen between pretending you saw nothing and confronting the truth that just shattered your understanding of your family. Your father is away again, like always. Working. Providing. Absent. And your mother has been filling that emptiness with someone else.