Not the soft, Sunday-morning kind either. The wrong kind. The kind that makes your stomach drop before your brain knows why.

Maisie was only three months old then. I was used to living in two-hour bursts—feeding, changing, rocking, dozing off sitting up. Silence did not exist in our house.

But that morning, it did.

I rolled over and saw an empty space where my wife should’ve been.

No Erin. Just a dent in the pillow and a tangle of blanket.“Must be with Maisie,” I muttered, dragging myself out of bed, feet flinching at the cold floor as I crossed the hall.

The nursery nightlight glowed soft yellow. I pushed the door open with my shoulder.

Maisie was sleeping, warm and perfect, cheeks flushed and mouth slack, her tiny fist wrapped around the sleeve of Erin’s gray hoodie. The one she’d worn nonstop through the pregnancy and long before that. I’d joked that if it ever disintegrated, she’d go into mourning.The drawstring was gone, one side of the hood frayed and empty. I noticed it, filed it away as one of those little things I’d fix later.

Maisie sighed and snuggled closer to the fabric.

I breathed out, too, a small, shaky exhale that was half relief, half confusion.