One minute I was setting the table and listening for his car in the drive.

The next I was standing in our kitchen with a stranger’s voice in my ear, answering impossible questions, staring at the half-full coffee mug he’d left by the sink that morning and would never come back to rinse.

I was eight months pregnant.

Grief does strange things to time.

Some mornings lasted ten minutes.

Some afternoons went on for days.

I slept badly and forgot to eat and kept one of Declan’s soft old T-shirts folded under my pillow because it still carried the faint smell of him, and I could not yet make myself wash it.