He knelt and placed the flowers down gently, brushing a bit of dirt from the polished granite. The letters on the stone were beginning to dull, but he didn’t need them to know what it said. “Hi, Mom,” he whispered. It had been almost a year since the accident. Almost a year since the house got quieter, colder, and smaller.
Lucas remembered every second of that day—the phone call, the silence afterward, the way his dad’s face didn’t change much when he told him. Like someone had just canceled dinner, not torn their lives in two. The funeral had been a blur. Lucas wore a suit too big for him and stood beside his father without knowing what to do. People cried.