I followed.
Station Road ran through an older neighborhood where small family businesses had survived despite the shopping centers built around them.
Cameron slowed outside a florist.
I parked across the street and watched him disappear inside.
The seconds crawled past.
I kept insisting there had to be an innocent explanation.
Anniversary flowers.
A gift for a client.
Someone in the hospital.
When Cameron emerged, he carried a single white rose.
Not a bouquet.
Just one flower.
He placed it carefully across the passenger seat and drove away.
I frowned.
A single rose felt intimate.
I hated how quickly my imagination supplied the missing details.
His next stop made everything seem worse.
Two blocks away, he entered a small tailor’s shop empty-handed and returned carrying a navy garment bag.
He hung it neatly in the back seat.
A flower.
Freshly pressed clothes.
Another late night.
That message.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel until my fingers hurt.
“Stop doing this,” I whispered. “You don’t know anything yet.”
But doubt has a way of persuading you.
Once it enters your mind, it begins rewriting the past.
Every late meeting becomes suspicious. Every distracted smile seems to carry a hidden meaning.
I remembered details I had never questioned before.
A Saturday when he left the house early.
A message that made him smile.
A Friday night when he came home humming a song I didn’t recognize.
None of those moments had troubled me then.
Now they aligned like fragments of an image I was afraid to complete.
