Adam loved telling stories where he was the hero.

  In those stories, he was always misunderstood. Always burdened. Always trying. And always, somehow, surrounded by people who demanded too much from him.

  He told those stories gently, with concern in his voice. With patience that sounded like mercy. With the kind of calm that made listeners feel ashamed for doubting him.

  Susan had learned, by her early teens, that adults believed tone more than truth.

  When Adam spoke of Jasmine, his voice changed.

  It became proud.

  Not proud in the quiet, grateful way. Proud like ownership.

  “Jasmine comes from a good family,” he would say, as if goodness could be inherited like money. “They are respectable people.”

  He would say it with the faintest smile, the kind that suggested the conversation should end there. As if the wealth itself was proof of virtue.

  Jasmine existed in Susan’s mind mostly as a collection of details Adam chose to deliver: a rich house, a soft voice, a steady life. A woman who supported him. A woman who understood him. A woman who didn’t demand what he called impossible things.

  He never said Jasmine asked for too much.

  He never said Jasmine made him tired.

  When Susan heard Jasmine’s name, she always pictured brightness. Clean floors.

  Quiet rooms. A home that did not feel like a storm shelter.

  Sometimes she saw proof.

  Photos appeared on screens, passed around like harmless things. Smiling faces.

  Carefully chosen angles. Two daughters in neat dresses. A table set beautifully. A birthday cake with candles standing straight, unbent by wind or chaos.

  Jasmine always looked composed in those photos. Like someone who had never had to pretend that stability was normal, because it simply was.

  Adam would show the pictures as if presenting a certificate.

  “Look,” he would say. “My daughters.”

  He emphasized the word my.

  “They’re smart,” he would add, voice warm with pride. “Beautiful. Well-mannered. One of them reads like an adult already.”

  He would speak of them with ease, describing their talents in detail, remembering their school achievements, their hobbies, the compliments they received. He had names for their teachers.

  He had stories of their successes.

  It was strange, hearing him speak like that.

  Strange in the way it is when you realize someone is capable of a skill they refused to practice for you.

  Susan listened quietly, her face still, her hands folded neatly in her lap as if she were in a room where she didn’t belong.

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  Adam rarely spoke that way about her.

  When he did speak of Susan, it was not pride. It was usefulness.

  “She’s responsible,” people said around the house in Veyara. “She’s capable.”

  “If you want something done right, ask Susan.”

  They praised her like she was an adult they could rely on, not a child still learning how to be alive.

  She was called smart so often it became a burden instead of a compliment. She was called mature so often it sounded like permission for others to stop caring for her.

  She was called helpful so often she began to understand that kindness, in a crowded life, got repaid with expectation.

  If she made a mistake, it was not treated like a mistake.

  It was treated like betrayal.

  So she learned not to make them.

  She learned not to drop plates.

  Not to cry loudly.

  Not to forget things.

  Not to need too much.

  Not to be difficult.

  Not to be human in ways that caused inconvenience.

  And the cruelest part was that she succeeded.

  She succeeded so well that everyone believed she was fine.

  Some days, Lilith would look at her daughter with tired admiration, and Susan would smile back as if she didn’t feel herself disappearing. Lilith would say, “You’re strong,” and Susan would nod as if strength wasn’t slowly hollowing her out.

  Because strength, in that house, was not something you earned.

  It was something assigned to you.

  Susan carried it anyway.

  Meanwhile, somewhere in Nereth, a family existed in Adam’s stories like a polished stone. Smooth. Clean. Uncomplicated.

  A family that worked.

  Or at least, a family Adam claimed worked.

  The truth was hard to confirm. Susan wasn’t there. She only had his words, his photos, and the way his voice sounded when he spoke of Jasmine’s daughters as if they were proof that he had done nothing wrong.

  Sometimes, late at night, Susan would lie awake while the house around her finally quieted. The cousins sleeping in piles. The distant noise of the street. The occasional shout from a neighbor’s window.

  She stared at the ceiling and tried to imagine what it felt like to live in a home where the air didn’t vibrate with stress.

  She tried to picture a life where you could be ordinary and still be loved.

  The thought felt unreal, like imagining a color she had never seen.

  There were moments, in that quiet, when the pressure inside her became too large for her chest. Moments when she wondered what it would be like to stop carrying everything. To simply… disappear from the role everyone had given her.

  The idea came like a whisper she didn’t ask for.

  It frightened her. Not because it was loud, but because it was calm.

  And then Alex would turn in his sleep, murmuring something half-formed, reaching for her without waking, and Susan would remember what leaving would do to the people who were already barely holding on.

  She would swallow the whisper.

  She would get up the next day.

  She would smile again.

  And no one would know how close she had come to the edge of herself.

  One afternoon, Adam called.

  Lilith answered as she always did, with softness that Susan no longer trusted. The call ended, and Lilith’s face was bright with relief, as if she had just been handed water after thirst.

  “He said he’s proud of you,” Lilith told Susan, voice almost eager. “He said you’re very smart.”

  Susan nodded, because nodding was easier than explaining.

  Lilith added quickly, “And he told me about Jasmine’s daughters. They’re doing so well.”

  Susan said nothing.

  Lilith didn’t notice. Or pretended not to. She needed the story to be true. She needed Adam to be good in some version of reality, because if he wasn’t, then the years she waited would become something unbearable.

  Susan understood that.

  So she did not take her mother’s hope away.

  Later that same week, Adam spoke again of Jasmine’s house. His tone was light, almost pleased with himself.

  “In my home,” he said, “things are calm. Things are organized. Things are… proper.”

  He paused, just long enough for the sentence to sharpen.

  “A man can only do so much when the people around him understand how to behave.”

  That was the revealing thing.

  Not the words themselves, but the meaning underneath them.

  Susan heard it clearly.

  Adam was saying it had never been his fault.

  Not with Eve.

  Not with Lilith.

  Not with Susan.

  The failure, in his mind, had always belonged to the women and children who did not make his life comfortable enough.

  Susan looked down at her hands.

  At the fingers that had cleaned, carried, soothed, fixed, and held a household together in Veyara.

  At the hands that had been praised, used, relied on.

  She felt something settle inside her with cold certainty.

  Some families “worked” only because Adam decided they were worth working for.

  And some doors stayed locked because the person behind them liked having the key.