I was eight months pregnant when I stood in a black dress that didn’t quite fit over my swollen belly and watched them lower him into the ground. No one would let me see his face. They said the crash had been too severe. They said I should remember him the way he was.

As if memory could compete with a coffin.

By the next morning, the baby I was carrying stopped fighting too.

In less than forty-eight hours, I lost my husband and my daughter. One to a highway. One to shock. That’s what the doctors called it. Trauma. Grief-induced labor.

Three years later, I lived in a third-floor apartment in a different city, with blank walls and no photographs. I worked reception at a dental office and survived by keeping my life small and quiet. No past. No future. Just manageable days.Until the banging started.

It was a Sunday afternoon when I heard furniture scraping up the stairwell. A man’s voice said, “Careful with the corner,” followed by a woman’s soft laugh.

I looked out the window.

A young family was moving in. A dark-haired woman directing movers. A toddler clutching a pink stuffed rabbit. A man lifting a couch with practiced ease.