The Smell of a Hard Shift
The plastic bags are gone.
The silence is broken.
Now, when my wife comes home, she walks in through the front door, exactly as she is — tired sometimes, healing still, and entirely loved.
And my son, who saw what I could not, gets to grow up knowing the truest thing either of us could teach him: that you don’t have to be fine to be loved, and you never have to carry the hard things alone.
THE END.