After dishes were cleared, Lila retreated to the living room with her book. Evelyn lingered by the mantle, fingers tracing the grooves of old wood as if reading Braille. Outside, a storm flirted with the horizon, the first distant rumble matching the unease in her chest. Marcus followed her gaze. “You okay?” he asked.
Evelyn set the cartons down with a clinical thud, extracting paper plates as though preparing for a picnic at a funeral. “Thai,” she said, and there was an edge to the way she pronounced it—an attempt to summon domestic normalcy. She watched Lila’s face for a flicker of approval and caught instead an unreadable shadow. The Seeds of Seduction- The Stepmother -Ch. 1 v...