She only nodded.
“Okay.”
Ethan relaxed because he thought the fight was over.
He did not understand that some women stop arguing only after they have finally believed what a man has been showing them.
He opened the door, rolled his suitcase over the threshold, and climbed into the back seat of his mother’s SUV.
Lorraine looked toward the house through the windshield and smiled.
Madison smiled back.
Not because she was forgiving her.
Because Lorraine had no idea what she had helped her son set in motion.
The SUV pulled away.
The street stayed quiet.
The neighbors’ trimmed lawns, closed garage doors, and morning sprinklers all kept moving as if Madison’s marriage had not just crossed a line it could not uncross.
She closed the door.
She locked it.
Then she walked slowly to the kitchen and picked up her phone.
The contact was saved as Rebecca Lawson.
