The funeral reception had ended two hours ago, but our house still smelled like the casseroles and sympathy flowers that well-meaning neighbors had brought in endless rotation over the past four days. The lilies in particular made my stomach turn—their sickly-sweet fragrance forever tainted now, inextricably linked to the memory of my fifteen-year-old daughter’s closed casket at the front of the church, surrounded by photographs from a life cut impossibly short. I stood at the kitchen sink, mechanically washing the same plate for the third time, staring out the window at the November dusk settling over our suburban backyard.

The tire swing David had hung from the oak tree when Emma was seven still hung there, motionless in the still air, a relic from a time when our greatest worry was whether she’d scrape her knee climbing too high. “Claire.” My husband’s voice behind me was flat, emotionless in that way it had been since the accident. Four days of shock had hollowed him out, leaving behind a man who looked like David but spoke with the mechanical precision of someone trying very hard not to feel anything at all.

“We need to talk about Emma’s room.”

I set down the plate, gripping the edge of the sink until my knuckles went white. “Not yet.”

“It’s been four days. The longer we wait, the harder it will be.” He moved to stand beside me, but he didn’t touch me, didn’t offer the comfort we both desperately needed and were both too broken to provide.

“I think we should pack up her things this weekend. Donate what we can. It’s not healthy to leave everything exactly as it was, like we’re waiting for her to come home.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

“She died four days ago, David. Four days. I haven’t even—I can’t even—” My voice cracked, the tears I’d been holding back since the funeral threatening to spill over again.

“Which is exactly why we need to do this now, while we can still function. Before the grief becomes so overwhelming that we can’t move forward at all.” His voice remained steady, controlled, but I heard the tremor underneath. “I can’t walk past her room every day and see her things exactly as she left them.

I can’t do it, Claire. It’s killing me.”

“So we just erase her? Pack everything away like she never existed?” The anger surged up from somewhere deep, hot and bitter.