I looked around the room.
Closed boxes. Silent memories. A house filled with absence.
Exactly as it was… hadn’t saved me.
I stood and walked to Eli, lifting him gently into my arms. He stirred, then settled against me.
Behind me, Judith began to cry—quietly, like she had been holding it in for too long.
I turned back to her.
“Next time,” I said, “you ask before going through my things.”
She let out a shaky laugh.
“Okay.”
I looked around again.
“And next time… we do it together.”
That was how it began.
Not healing—not something so simple.
Judith wasn’t my daughter. Eli wasn’t a replacement.
But something shifted.
The house didn’t feel frozen anymore.
It felt… lived in.
Later, after cleaning up the broken dishes and making fresh tea, we sat on the floor with Eli between us, flipping through photo albums together.
She pointed at a picture.
“Was she funny?”
