The phone call came early. By the time I reached the hospital, it was already over. A sudden heart failure, they said. Too quick. Too final. Carla stood beside the bed, composed and distant, while my entire body shook as if it were breaking apart.
She did not cry.
At the funeral, as I struggled to remain upright beside the casket, she leaned close and whispered that I was drawing attention to myself. That I needed to pull myself together. Her words felt sharper than the cold air around us.
After that day, something shifted. Whatever thin layer of tolerance she had maintained vanished entirely.
Two weeks later, I came home from school to find her emptying my father’s closet. His clothes were being tossed aside with careless movements, his ties shoved into a large trash bag as if they were meaningless scraps.
I remember the panic rising in my chest as I rushed forward, begging her to stop. Those ties were not just fabric to me. They were part of him. Each one carried a memory. A meeting he was nervous about. A holiday breakfast he cooked while humming off-key.
