What script exists for telling innocent children their father is gone forever? The task sat on my chest like a concrete block. I looked at my brother for any hint of guidance, finding only grief that mirrored my own.
“I don’t know how,” I whispered, my voice breaking apart. “Michael, I don’t know how to exist without him.”
Michael squeezed my arm. “You won’t face this alone. Not for one moment.”
But I was alone. I would remain alone in ways I hadn’t experienced before.
I felt the plane decent through the clouds, bringing me closer to the moment I would have to shatter my children’s world.
Chapter
Five
The funeral had been a blur—achurch packed with people I barely remembered seeing. Hundreds of mourners: business associates, investors, employees. I’d stood at the front in a black dress, accepting condolences from faces that swam together like watercolors in rain.
Arthur Vance had given the eulogy.
I remembered that part with sharp, bitter clarity. Arthur, who’d spoken with Marco maybe a dozen times in the eight months since we’d brought him onto the board. Arthur, who called him “a visionary” and “a dear friend” while his wife Helen dabbed at dry eyes with a handkerchief.
Michael had held me upright at the cemetery when my legs gave out. And then... nothing. Just the endless, hollow days that followed.
Now it was a week after the funeral. Three weeks since Aspen. Three weeks since my world shattered.
The doorbell rang. I pulled the pillow over my head, hoping whoever it was would give up and go away.
“I’ll get it,” Michael called from somewhere downstairs.
I rolled onto my side, staring at the empty space next to me. I imagined Marco’s pillow still carried the shape of him, the faint dip where his head had rested, though I knew that was only my mind filling in what I wanted to see.
The sheets had been washed multiple times since I came back from Aspen. The pillowcase changed. Any physical trace of him was long gone, yet I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the center of the bed. Every night, I curled on my side, one hand stretched across the cool expanse of the mattress, as if I might wake to find him there again. Warm and solid and real.
The morning light slanted through the curtains, illuminating dust motes that drifted like tiny ghosts. I watched them dance, thinking how Marco used to wake before me, propped on one elbow, just watching me sleep.What are you doing?I’d murmur, still half-dreaming.Memorizing you,he’d say, tracing a finger down my cheek.How beautiful you are.
I pressed my face into his pillow, searching for any lingering scent of him. But there was nothing. Just the clean, empty smell of laundry detergent.
There was a soft knock on the bedroom door. “Tess?” Michael again. “It’s almost ten.”
I closed my eyes, pretending I hadn’t heard. But Michael knew me too well to be fooled. The door creaked open, and I felt the mattress dip as he sat on the edge of the bed. He didn’t say anything at first, just sat there.
“The kids are asking for you,” he said, his voice gentle. “Rome tried to make breakfast for everyone. It’s all over the kitchen floor.”
Guilt cut through the fog. They needed me, and here I was, hiding in bed like a coward. I’d been doing the bare minimum—making sure they were fed, dressed, alive—but nothing more. I was a ghost in my home, drifting through rooms without fully inhabiting them.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” I mumbled, my voice hoarse from disuse.
Michael’s hand found my shoulder, squeezed once—the same way he used to when we were kids and I’d had a nightmare. No words needed, justI’m here.Then he stood and left, pulling the door almost closed behind him but not quite. Never quite.
Michael and Shelly had absorbed themselves into our household. They’d created a rhythm I couldn’t have managed on my own. Michael handled the mornings, coaxing all the kids out of bed, finding matching shoes, and making sure backpacks were ready for school. Shelly took afternoons. Yesterday I’d found her in the laundry room, folding tiny socks into perfect pairs, Paris sitting on the dryer telling her an elaborate story about a princess who could turn invisible. Shelly had been listening as if it were the most important story in the world, nodding in all the right places, while matching each sock to its mate.
“Your mama’s lucky to have you,” she’d told Paris. “You’re being so brave.”
I’d stood in the doorway, unable to speak, unable to thank her. Didn’t have words big enough.
The kids were all processing their father’s death in their own ways. Austin had retreated, spending most of his time reading. Rome had become a whirlwind of motion—running, climbing, breaking things—as if he could outrun the pain. Paris spoke hergrief in brutal, honest declarations: “Daddy’s dead and he’s not coming back,” stated as fact at the grocery store to anyone who would listen. And Aspen, my baby at two years old, had simply gone quiet. She painted and drew, but rarely spoke anymore, her big eyes watching everything.
With effort, I pushed myself upright. My body felt wrong—lighter, weaker, as if grief had hollowed me out. I pulled on the first clothes I found: sweatpants and one of Marco’s old Stanford sweatshirts, the fabric soft and worn.
I brushed my teeth, and when I finally looked up, I barely recognized the woman staring back. Pale, shadowed eyes, hair that no longer shone. I looked like someone half-erased.
