I was buttoning up my coat to go to my husband’s funeral when my grandson burst into the garage, pale as a ghost. The silence before that moment had been thick, pressing against my ears like cotton, broken only by the distant hum of a refrigerator inside the house and the faint creak of cooling metal. I had moved slowly, mechanically, every action feeling borrowed, as if I were watching myself from somewhere far away. Three days had passed since Michael’s sudden heart attack, three days of condolences, casseroles, and hollow phrases that slid off me without leaving a mark.

Forty-two years of marriage had ended in a hospital room that smelled of disinfectant and finality, and now I was expected to button a coat and say goodbye in public. I had just reached for the car door when the garage door slammed open hard enough to echo. Lucas stood there, breathless, his face drained of color, eyes wide with a terror I had never seen in him before. “Gran, don’t start the car! Please, don’t!” he cried. The keys froze in my hand, inches from the ignition. I remember thinking, absurdly, that children shouldn’t sound like that, shouldn’t carry that kind of fear in their voices. “Why?” I whispered.