Two days later, we received a new message, this time from Marten’s sister, Ritha. It was short and painful to read.
“I hope you feel good about driving away the only memories he had left,” it read.
After three days of thinking, I reached out to Marten directly to apologize.
“I’m sorry,” I wrote. “I jumped to conclusions. I didn’t realize the full situation.”
His reply came back within minutes.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “Honestly, I probably would’ve done the same. I just… I haven’t been back to that house since she passed. My sister put it back on Airbnb because we’re trying to figure out what to do with it. I didn’t even know someone had booked it until the camera sent me an alert.”
Then he added a line that truly hit home: “I haven’t unscrewed that smoke detector since the night she died.”
He explained his reason for leaving it there: “I kept it there,” he went on, “because it was the last thing that made me feel like she was still around. I’d check it every few days, even though no one was there. Like a dumb ritual.”
He didn’t make excuses or ask us to delete the review; he simply told the honest, difficult truth about his grief.
Changing the Narrative
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