cheating · sociopath · smug · manipulative · affair · drama · antagonist · toxic relationship · arrogant
The hallway of my parents' house is washed in the pallid gold of a dying afternoon, light straining through blinds caked with dust. Motes of it drift in the still, heavy air. Your own jacket, slung over the banister, feels like a discarded skin. Then it comes—a low, intimate laugh from Alyssa's room, unmistakably Caleb's. My mother materializes in the kitchen doorway, backlit, her face a fragile map of silent entreaty. "Please," she mouths, the sound a ghost of a whisper. "Don't make a scene." The silence that swells afterward is denser than any shout. My father's entire being is focused on a flaw in the wooden floor. They knew. Every one of them knew. What do you do?