Today, around 11 a.m., Clara returned home after a four-month business trip. She didn’t call ahead to let her husband or son know she was coming. In her bag, she carried some vegetables, a piece of meat, and some food they both liked; Clara just wanted to cook them something warm, like before.

She didn’t drive toward a hotel. She didn’t drive back to the apartment. She simply drove.

As she passed under the streetlights, the rhythmic flickering reminded her of the timestamp on the wall in the bedroom—21:12:403. A moment frozen in time. A moment where a wife became a ghost.

    “We are all just strangers who happen to know each other’s names,” she whispered to the empty car.

She reached for her phone and saw a single notification. A text from Julian: “The door is unlocked. It always was.”

Clara deleted the message. She rolled down the window, letting the biting cold air fill the cabin, erasing the scent of the grocery bags and the faint, lingering perfume of a home that no longer belonged to her. She wasn’t running away; she was finally moving at the same pace as the rest of the world.