Stevie-Lou’s POV

Three days.

It had been three days since we lowered my father into the ground.

Three days since I stood beside his casket, dressed in black, staring down at the man who raised me…silent and still beneath a polished wooden lid. Three days of hearing strangers murmur things like “He was a good man” and “So sorry for your loss,” as if their condolences could glue together the splintered mess inside my chest.

They couldn’t. Nothing could.

The grief was a living thing. It clung to me like a second skin, heavy and suffocating, curling around my lungs every time I tried to breathe. I sat curled up...