The laundry basket tipped over with a soft thud, spilling its secrets across the floor.

Marla froze, fingers hovering above the crumpled fabric—her daughter’s peach-colored panties, the lace trim delicate, the cotton gusset stiff with dried streaks of something unmistakable. She inhaled sharply. The scent lingered—musky, metallic, familiar—even through the detergent.

Her stomach twisted.

Then, beneath the tangled heap, another garment slithered free: her son’s t-shirt, the one with the stretched-out neckline he refused to throw away. Stuck to it, like a whisper of guilt, was a single, dark curl—Lina’s hair.

Marla’s pulse hammered in her throat.

The house creaked around her, the hum of the AC drowning out whatever noises might’ve seeped through the walls earlier. She’d ignored the muffled laughter from Lina’s room last weekend, chalked it up to late-night videos. The way Kael had bolted upright when she’d walked in on him shirtless yesterday, his cheeks flushed—she’d assumed it was just that age.

But this—

Her fingers trembled as she picked up the shirt. It smelled like them—salt and sweat and something sweet underneath. The kind of scent that clung to skin after—

A floorboard groaned upstairs. A giggle. A low, teasing murmur.

Marla’s breath hitched.

What was she supposed to do? Storm in there? Pretend she hadn’t seen anything? She squeezed the fabric tighter, her nails digging into her palms.

The washing machine hummed, waiting.

Marla stood there—stock-still, her pulse thrumming in her ears—until the distant creak of bedsprings snapped her back into motion. She tossed the clothes into the machine with a force that made the metal drum shudder, then slammed the lid shut.

The detergent cap slipped from her fingers, bouncing across the tiles. She didn’t pick it up.

Upstairs, the murmur of voices dipped into breathless laughter—that laugh, the one Lina only used when she was trying too hard to sound innocent. Kael’s answering rumble was muffled, but Marla didn’t need to hear the words. The tone was enough—low, teasing, intimate.