the phone. “Don’t make this about choosing sides.”
I stared across the cemetery at three coffins. One large, two small.
Something inside me fell silent.
After the funeral, I returned to a house still carrying the scent of my children’s cereal and my husband’s cedar soap. An unsigned sympathy card from my parents lay on the kitchen counter, still inside its drugstore envelope.
Vanessa posted birthday photographs that evening.
Golden balloons, champagne, and my parents smiling beside her cake.
Her caption read: Family shows up for what matters.
I didn’t
