You are standing in the kitchen, your hands gripping the edge of the counter so hard that your knuckles ache. The sunlight coming through the window feels wrong. Too bright. Too ordinary. It shouldn’t dare to shine today — not after everything.

Hazel’s empty chair at the table stabs at you like a knife every time you look at it. It’s just a chair, but it holds fifteen years of laughter, sarcasm, late-night cereal, and arguments over whose turn it was to do the dishes.

You slam a mug into the sink. It shatters, and for a brief second, the sharp crack is satisfying — louder than the silence that’s been swallowing the house since the night Hazel left you.

Simon appears in the doorway, quiet and steady, like always. His calm feels unbearable. You want to scream at him — at the world — at God — at Hazel.

“She was just a kid,” you say, your voice shaking. “She didn’t even get to know how good life could be. How could she— how could she do this to us?”

Simon crosses the kitchen and puts a hand on your back. You stiffen. You don’t want comfort, not really. You want revenge. You want to break something big enough to match the size of the hole in your chest.

But he doesn’t flinch.

“She was hurting,” he says quietly, his voice the calm in the middle of a storm you can’t escape. “And she didn’t see another way.”