The viewing room smelled of lilies, furniture polish, and the kind of grief people wore politely in public. I stood beside my father Daniel’s casket and listened while strangers praised a man I had spent my life obeying.
Devoted husband. Faithful father. Quiet widower. I nodded like their version of him belonged to me, even while I kept seeing my mother, Evelyn, at our kitchen counter, folding a napkin around my sandwich and tucking it into my lunchbox before she vanished.
“Anna, your father adored you,” a woman murmured.
I wished I knew what love had looked like inside our house.
“Thank you,” I said.
“He never stopped loving Evelyn.”
I heard that all afternoon. I wished I knew what love had looked like inside our house.