“Dad, my green socks are gone.”
“She won’t give me my eraser back.”
“He keeps staring at me.”
Somewhere between the noise, my youngest started crying.
Maisie was convinced her stuffed bunny had disappeared forever, even though it was tucked securely under her arm.
My name is Samuel Carter.
I’m forty-two years old, a widower, and the tired father of four kids who somehow manage to sound like a construction site before sunrise.
Two years earlier, my life had been unrecognizable compared to this one.
My wife, Hannah, was still alive then.
She laughed easily, sang off-key while cooking, and had a way of softening even the hardest days.
When Maisie was born, we joked that our house had reached maximum chaos.
Four kids felt like more than enough for one lifetime.
Three months later, Hannah was diagnosed with cancer.
At first, we lied to ourselves.
We blamed exhaustion. Stress. Sleepless nights with a newborn.
Anything that let us pretend nothing was wrong.
But the truth was brutal and fast.
The kind of illness that doesn’t slow down or wait for hope.
