“Make some for her too!” Emily declared, already halfway to the stairs as if Clare now belonged to the plan.
Jonathan disappeared down the hallway and returned with a thick sweater and warm socks folded over his arm. His eyes softened as he offered them.
“These were my wife’s,” he said quietly. “She passed away eighteen months ago. I think she’d be… glad they’re helping someone.”
Clare took the sweater like it was sacred.
In the bathroom, she peeled off her dress and stared at her own skin, mottled pink from the cold. Her reflection looked younger than twenty-eight and older than twenty-eight at the same time. She pulled on the sweater and socks, and when warmth began creeping into her feet, she surprised herself by crying, silent and shaking, because it wasn’t just heat returning.
It was dignity.
When she emerged, hot chocolate waited on the table alongside sandwiches cut into triangles, the way someone cuts food when they want it to feel gentle. Clare realized she was ravenous in a way that embarrassed her, but no one made a comment. The kids talked about school and snowmen. Jonathan supervised homework with the calm authority of a man who had negotiated bedtime for years and survived.
It was an ordinary domestic scene, and it nearly broke her.
Because this was what Clare had wanted. A home. A family. Children. The sound of laughter under a roof. And she had been thrown out as if she was a defective appliance, because her body hadn’t produced what Marcus demanded.
Emily noticed the tears shining in Clare’s eyes. “Did someone hurt you?” she asked, blunt as only a child can be.
Clare forced a smile. “I’m okay, sweetheart. I’m just… grateful.”
