Daniel Harper had built his empire from nothing. Steel towers, luxury developments, influence that stretched across Chicago. He understood contracts, leverage, timing. He did not understand loss.
Yet for four years, every Sunday had belonged to it.
His driver, Thomas, no longer asked where they were going. The black sedan moved automatically through downtown, past glass skyscrapers that carried Daniel’s name, past the manicured estates of the North Shore, until it reached the quiet order of Evergreen Memorial Park.
Daniel stared through the tinted window, seeing none of it. Sundays were for Ethan.
For the memory of Ethan. For the silence Ethan left behind.
His only son had died at thirty-two in a senseless accident on Interstate 90, driving home from a free medical clinic Daniel had often criticized.
“You’re wasting your talent,” Daniel used to say. “Open a private practice. Build something real.”
Ethan would just smile. “I am building something real, Dad.”
A semi-truck’s brakes failed. There was no time to build anything more.
Four years. People promised the pain would soften.
“Time heals,” colleagues told him.
They were wrong. Time didn’t heal. It deepened the hollow space.