Chapter 43: It's Dead
Lizzie
Mom didn’t say anything at first. And that, more than anything, told me I had hit exactly where it hurt.
Because my mother—my ever-composed, ever-calculating, always-ready-with-a-response mother—was not the kind of woman who went silent unless she had been cornered in a way she hadn’t prepared for.
Words were her weapon, her shield, her entire strategy for navigating life, and watching her stand there now, lips slightly parted but no sound coming out, felt almost surreal.
For a moment, the noise from downstairs—the soft murmur of condolences, the occasional clink of glassware, the low volume of polite grief—seemed to grow louder in the absence of her voice, filling the space between us in a way that only made the silence heavier.
She hadn’t expected th
