I found Jane, still in the black dress. She was still wearing the makeup she had pretended to apply with so much joy just hours before. My daughter sat on the loveseat near the window, her knees pulled up, her head resting against the armrest.
When she looked up at me, her eyes were swollen and red.
“Mom…” she said, and her voice cracked.
I went straight to her and pulled her into my arms. She broke down completely—no words, just sobs that came from somewhere deep.
I held her the way I used to when she was little, my hand stroking her hair, my chin resting on the crown of her head.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I whispered. “You didn’t deserve this. None of it.”
She cried harder.
After a while, when the tears slowed, she pulled back slightly and wiped her nose with the hem of a tissue. I handed her another. She took a breath, then another, and finally spoke.
“I didn’t want to believe it when I first suspected,” she said. “At first, it was just little things. Dylan would get weird when I mentioned Lily. He suddenly didn’t want her in the group chats. He said she was ‘too opinionated’ and made things more stressful.”
I stayed quiet. She needed to say it all.
“Then he changed his phone password,” she said, “and started saying he was working late, but I’d call the office and they said he had already left. He claimed he was meeting his brother Jim, but his brother told me they hadn’t talked in weeks.”
She rubbed her eyes.
“I made excuses for him, Mom. I convinced myself that I was being paranoid. But then, one night, I couldn’t sleep, and I checked his laptop. He forgot to log out of his messages.”
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