When my dad died last spring, the world quieted in a way that felt almost unreal. He had been the steady in every season of my life — the too-sweet pancakes, the jokes that made me groan, the pep talks that always ended with, “You can do anything, sweetheart.” After my mom passed when I was eight, it was just the two of us for almost ten years — until he remarried Carla.
Carla moved through the house like a cold draft: perfume sharp as winter flowers, smiles that never quite reached her eyes, and nails shaped into perfect little points. At the hospital, when Dad’s heart failed, I didn’t see her shed a single tear. At the funeral, when my knees gave out at the graveside, she leaned close and whispered, “You’re embarrassing yourself. He’s gone. It happens to everyone.”
I couldn’t make a sound. Grief had turned my throat to dust.
