The house was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator humming through two walls.
Three years a widow, and I still kept to Henry’s side of the bed, as if leaving the other side empty meant he might come back.
That night, I had been awake since midnight, scrolling through my phone the way lonely people do.
Rose’s profile was the page I lingered on the longest.
My daughter was 28 now, finally in her own apartment across town after years of living with me. I should have felt proud.
Instead, I felt the slow ache of a mother whose calls kept going to voicemail.