The False Apologies

Sunlight sliced through the narrow gap in the curtains, stinging Kaelia’s swollen eyes. Eight o'clock. The deadline hung over her head like a guillotine. She dragged her exhausted body from the mattress, her bones aching from a restless night spent staring at the ceiling. The silence in the house was deafening. Silas’s bedroom door remained firmly shut as she walked past it in the hallway. Her fat