Three weeks after losing my daughter, I moved through life like I was underwater—slow, heavy, numb. Grief had ripped my world open. The morning felt like a gray blur; fog pressed against the kitchen window, softening edges until nothing felt real. I sat at the table in my husband’s sweatshirt, clutching a cold mug of coffee, trying to remember what it felt like to exist before tragedy hollowed me out.
My name is Erin. I’m forty. My daughter, Lily, was ten.
She died on a rainy Saturday morning, strapped into her booster seat and grinning at her dad. Daniel had promised her hot chocolate afterward. They never made it. A pickup lost control, barreled across the divider, and crushed their car. Lily was gone instantly. Daniel survived, but his spirit had fractured alongside his ribs.
I kept Lily’s room exactly as she left it. Her half-finished sunflower sketch on her desk. Her pink lamp glowing faintly at night. Her bracelet-making kit waiting on her nightstand. Passing her door felt like trespassing in someone else’s life. Silence hung over the house like a suffocating blanket.
That morning, a strange scratching came at the back door. Baxter, our golden retriever mix, Lily’s shadow, had never scratched like this before.
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