For most of my life, it had been just the two of us. My daughter, Ava, is fifteen now, a girl built of quiet strength and a resilience she should never have been forced to develop. We lost her father, Daniel, when she was only four years old. I still carry the jagged memories of that time like shards of glass in my heart: the rain-slicked roads, the frantic knock of a police officer at my kitchen table, and the crushing finality of a closed casket. The authorities told me the accident was catastrophic, that the fire had left nothing to recognize. In my grief, I was a ghost, signing a death certificate through a fog of tears and painkillers. For eleven years, I believed I was a widow. For eleven years, I raised Ava in the shadow of a man who was nothing more than a memory and a name on a headstone.
The current year had already been the hardest of my life before the police ever showed up. I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, and the chemotherapy was hollowating me from the inside out. A few weeks ago, my hair began to fall out in clumps, leaving me feeling exposed and diminished. I tried to be brave, wrapping colorful scarves around my head and pretending the loss didn’t matter, but Ava saw through the facade. She has always been too perceptive for her own good.
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