My sister, Grace, stayed beside me through everything.
She answered calls. She arranged food. She helped dress my children for their father’s funeral.
Ava was seven. Ben was five.
They clung to me so tightly I sometimes wondered if they thought I might disappear too.
After the funeral, the house became too quiet.
I slept on Liam’s side of the bed. I wore his old gray sweatshirt until it stopped smelling like him. I played his voicemail over and over just to hear him say, “Hey, honey. I’m on my way home.”
Three days after we buried him, his boss called.
His name was Mark, and his voice sounded wrong the moment I answered.
“Emily,” he said quietly, “I need you to come to the office.”
I sat up in bed. “Why?”
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