Just one hour after I buried my wife, my 7-year-old son-felicia

He didn’t answer.

And that silence frightened me more than anything else.

Three days earlier, my life had been ordinary.

Not perfect.

Not glamorous.

But happy.

Laura and I had been married for eleven years.

We met at a neighborhood barbecue when I was twenty-six and she was twenty-four.

She was a pediatric nurse with a warm laugh, dark brown hair, and an extraordinary ability to make frightened children feel safe.

I worked long hours supervising construction crews.