The first thing I noticed was the silence. Real silence. Not the soft quiet that came between feedings. Not the sleepy hush of a house at dawn. This was a strange, heavy silence that made my skin prickle. My daughter Maisie was only three months old then. She usually woke every few hours, so silence wasn’t normal — it felt wrong. I blinked at the baby monitor beside my bed. The screen was pure white noise, like it had frozen in the middle of something important. I sat up fast.

There are two kinds of tired. One makes your legs ache, your eyes sting, and your brain feel foggy — the kind you fix with coffee and a quiet moment. And then there’s the other kind, the one that sits behind your ribs like a stone, heavy and unmoving… like grief that didn’t quite get the memo. That’s the kind I carried that Tuesday evening as I stood in line at the pharmacy, exhausted from a long day at work. I was still in my wrinkled button-down, tie half-loosened —

Everyone expected tears of joy at my son’s wedding. No one expected the groom to stop the ceremony with a single, chilling sentence—while pointing at the bride’s father. They say weddings are supposed to be the happiest day of your life—a beginning, a promise, a celebration. But for me, Elaine, a mother and wife who always believed that love could survive anything, it became the day everything unraveled. Like a ribbon pulled too tight, everything snapped, right there in a room full of flowers, music, and unsuspecting guests. For months,