"From Daddy's car. The lady who rode with him forgot it."
Elena's eyes found her husband's. The towel slipped a little in her hands.
"What lady?"
Sofia, helpful as always when she believed she was solving a mystery, lifted the bottle higher.
"The one Daddy drove here when you were working late."
Marco closed the laptop too quickly. The sound cracked through the rainy quiet like a small bone breaking. Alarm flashed across his face before he could catch it.
"Hold on… that sounds worse than it was."
The words hung in the air between them. Sofia kept smiling, pink cardigan puddling around her sneakers, necklace glittering with innocent pride. Elena recognized the perfume before she recognized her own voice. The floral note—jasmine threaded with something darker, almost like crushed violets—rose from the bottle and from her daughter's wrists and filled the family room with a memory Elena had locked away four years ago. She looked at Marco with a coldness that did not raise its volume.