I live now in a house that sounds like a grave. The television hums without volume. My husband barely moves, a ghost in his own body. Isabella’s room is still untouched, her clothes folded, her drawings taped to the wall, frozen in a time before a single sentence detonated all of our lives. I walk from door to door, not really entering, just orbiting the ruins of the family I helped destroy.

Adrien kept his word: he came to the funeral, left a flower, and stayed in the back, as if we were strangers. I wanted to run to him, to beg on my knees, but I understood something too late—he didn’t owe us his body, his forgiveness, or his presence. We had already spent his life like loose change. People tell me time will heal. They’re wrong. Time doesn’t heal; it only forces you to sit longer with what you did when you refused to listen.