The house had been quiet for years. Not the peaceful kind of quiet, but the kind that settles in after something has been taken from you and never returned. The kind that lingers in corners, in empty rooms, in habits you don’t break because breaking them would mean accepting what happened.
I still kept his number saved as “Son.”
I never changed it. Never deleted it. Every now and then, I’d scroll past it in my contacts, thumb hovering for a second longer than it should, like somehow that small act could hold onto something that was already gone.
