When Christopher came home that night, a floral perfume that was not mine clung to his lapels.

I set his dinner in front of him without a flicker of expression.

“How was your meeting?” I asked.

“Very productive,” he lied smoothly, eyes on his phone.

“We covered a lot of strategy.”

In the weeks that followed, the change in him was undeniable — the sudden obsession with fitness, the expensive cologne, the phone guarded like classified files.

But the final blow did not come from Christopher.

It came from his mother.