My name is Claire, and up until I met my husband Daniel, I lived a pretty boring life. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. My dad fixed HVAC systems and my mom worked a dental front desk. I studied accounting in college because it was practical, got my CPA license, and became a senior corporate auditor in Chicago. I was really good at it. My old boss used to say I could find a missing penny in a spreadsheet with ten thousand rows. That was basically my superpower. Then I met Daniel. He was in Chicago for a work trip, we hit it off at a coffee shop, and eighteen months later we were married. I packed up my apartment and moved to San Francisco. That’s when I met his mother, Victoria. Victoria lived in Pacific Heights on a stretch some locals call Billionaire’s Row. The first time I walked into her house, it looked like a museum. Marble floors, oil paintings, a full-time staff. Victoria hugged me, told me I was exactly what Daniel needed, and played the perfect welcoming mother-in-law. It took ...
Is it better to speak, or to die? The question belonged on the pages of some dusty, forgotten philosophy book. I felt like one of those books - left on a bottom shelf, accumulating dust. Outside, the wind battered against the windows, echoing the chaos in my mind. I didn’t move. It didn’t matter; nothing matters when you’re sad. When you’re sad, the world feels ruined. What’s meant to be an ocean blue, calm and predictable becomes a tornado of waves sent to pull you under, to wrap seaweed around your frail neck - if you exist that is. Silence is an omen of peace, whereas, words are an enemy on a battlefield. Armoured and heavy with artillery and weapons, filled with hope for destruction, a destruction of peace. I kept my mouth shut, my teeth clenched tight as if my tongue was a trigger and my mouth a gun. I could hear the house settling, the floorboards groaning under the pressure of the foreboding wind, but I was listening for something else - the sound of somebody approaching, comin...