The house was suffocating in its silence, broken only by my husband’s relentless insistence. Forty-eight hours after we buried our fifteen-year-old daughter, Chloe, Mark was already fixated on her bedroom. To him, it was clutter to be cleared; to me, it was sacred—still scented with her perfume, echoing with her laughter.
“It’s for the best, Elena,” he said, voice tight. “We need to clear it out. Tomorrow. I’ll bring the boxes.”
Grief pinned me to the floor. I couldn’t face her sweaters, notebooks, or dried flowers. Weeks passed, and his urgings never stopped. Then one day, I said, “I’ll do it myself.” I needed to touch her things one last time, to say goodbye in quiet.
Inside her room, time seemed frozen. Her bedspread slightly rumpled, schoolbooks untouched, her world paused. As I sorted her life, a folded note slipped from her Wuthering Heights copy:
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