My marriage to David Miller was a picture of perfection, a dream life built on his charm and our shared happiness.
Then came the call: my mother in an accident, and David, my husband, utterly unreachable.
Hours bled into sterile dread in the hospital waiting room, a dread far deeper than my mother' s condition.
An unknown text arrived, a single photo: David, arm around another woman, intimate, familiar.
It was my aunt, Sophia Hayes, my mother' s estranged sister, her smile painfully like mine.
My world, once perfect, splintered into a million icy shards under the humming hospital lights.
He returned late, weaving slick lies about dead phones and urgent meetings, as if I were a child to be placated.