All my life, I had been building a fortress. Brick by brick.
No towers. No knights. Just a microwave that beeped like a heart monitor, kids’ lunchboxes that always smelled like apples, dried-out markers, and sleepless nights.
I raised my daughter alone.
Her father disappeared when she was three.
“Like the autumn wind blowing off a calendar,” I once said to my best friend Rosemary, “one page gone, no warning.”
I didn’t have time to cry.