The church was packed—coworkers, neighbors, distant relatives, and strangers whose faces I barely knew, all gathered to mourn her. White and blush flowers crowded the altar, their sweet scent heavy in the warm air. Candles trembled in tall brass holders, throwing unsteady light across the ancient stone walls.
Somewhere behind it all, the organ played a slow funeral hymn I had heard too many times before.
And still, in the middle of all those people, I had never felt so alone.
I stood a short distance from the closed casket, my hands hanging uselessly by my sides. I stared at the polished wood as though looking hard enough might somehow make it open, might let me hear her voice one last time. Just once.
Long enough for her to tell me, “Dad, it’s okay. I’m fine. There’s been some mistake.”
But coffins don’t make mistakes, and death doesn’t bargain.
Laura had been my whole world.
She was the reason I kept going after everything else had fallen apart. When her mother died, the house became an empty shell. Every room echoed.
The bed felt too wide and too cold. That first night, I watched my little girl cry herself to sleep, her tiny shoulders trembling under the blanket, and I made a silent promise—to her and to whatever force might be listening—that I would protect her no matter what it cost me.
And I did.
I raised her alone. At first awkwardly, then with the fierce devotion only a widowed father truly understands.
I worked two jobs, sometimes three, to give her every chance. I learned to braid hair badly, ruined more dinners than I can count, and sat up late helping with homework I barely understood. The day she got into college, I cried alone in the kitchen.
The day she graduated, I clapped until my palms stung and shouted her name until my throat hurt.
I had shown up for every milestone in her life.
And I had been there the day she introduced me to Daniel.
Even standing beside her casket, the thought of him crept into my mind and tightened my throat with grief and resentment. Daniel stood near the first pew in a perfect black suit, every hair in place, his face arranged into an expression of noble suffering. People kept approaching him, touching his sleeve, shaking his hand, whispering condolences as though he were the one who had suffered the deepest loss.
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