that question alone. His response was too quick, too rehearsed, and that alone told me everything was already wrong. Then he said it—six men at the school, asking for my daughter by name. My hand slipped against the sink, the bowl cracked, and for a moment I couldn’t tell if the sound came from porcelain or from inside me.
The principal explained that Letty had refused to leave the office when she heard Jonathan’s name mentioned. That detail hit harder than anything else. Jonathan wasn’t just a memory to her—he was still present in the way she reacted to the world, in the way grief had settled into her bones without ever fully leaving. I grabbed my coat without thinking. The house suddenly felt continue reading …
