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Three weeks had passed, yet time felt frozen, as if my life had stopped moving forward while the rest of the world kept going without me.
I am Erin, and at forty years old, I was learning how quiet a house can be when the light that once filled it is suddenly gone. My days blended together, marked only by sleepless nights and long, empty mornings. I moved through my home on autopilot, doing the bare minimum to appear functional while my heart stayed somewhere far away.
My daughter Lily had been ten years old. Bright, curious, and endlessly kind, she had a way of making ordinary moments feel important. One rainy Saturday morning changed everything for our family, leaving a silence that felt too heavy to carry.
I don’t often speak about what happened. Even now, it feels unreal. But to understand what followed, you need to understand the space I was in. I was surviving, not living. Breathing, but barely.
The house felt wrong without her. Too still. Too neat. Too empty.
