Margaret Collins was already awake when the knock came. At her age, sleep was fragile, easily broken by silence or memory. But something about that knock—firm, deliberate—made her chest tighten before she even reached the door.
Two police officers stood on her porch, hats in hand, faces set in that practiced expression of quiet sympathy.
They hadn’t spoken yet.
They didn’t need to.
Her knees nearly gave out.
“Mrs. Collins…” one of them began gently.
Her son was gone.
Daniel Collins had died in a car accident just hours earlier. The words came slowly, carefully, but they landed all at once, shattering everything inside her. His wife—Rebecca—had survived.
Margaret didn’t scream.
She didn’t collapse.
She simply nodded, as if accepting something she couldn’t yet understand, and closed the door with trembling hands. The silence afterward felt unbearable, like the world had paused and forgotten how to move forward.
At the funeral, everything blurred together—the murmured condolences, the scent of lilies, the dull ache in her chest that refused to release.
But what unsettled her most wasn’t her own grief.
It was Rebecca.