The house felt unrecognizable after he left. The silence wasn’t peaceful, it was suffocating. Every sound carried a weight: the creak of the floor, the faint ticking of the clock, the baby’s soft whimpering from her crib. Emily sat on the floor, knees drawn to her chest, the phone still on the table where she’d dropped it. Her eyes were swollen, her hands trembling.
She didn’t know how long she sat like that, only that the light through the curtains shifted from gold to gray before she moved again. The baby cried, a small sound at first, then louder. Emily wiped her face and went to her, scooping her up and holding her close. The warmth of that tiny body pressed against her chest was the only thing that kept her from unraveling completely.