I shake myself from the memory, trying to claw my way back to the present. The late afternoon sun filters through the library's shutters, painting streaks of gold across Dad's desk. Summer has arrived, its warmth usually a promise of freedom and laughter. But not this year. This year, it feels like a cruel joke.

The counselors Mom forced me to see said grief comes in stages, as if it's a process you can check off like a to-do list for heartbreak. Five neat little boxes to tick: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But they don't tell you how these stages crash into each other like waves, how you can feel all of them at once until you're drowning.

They said I'm strong, resilient, and a survivor.

What they don't understand is that surviving isn't a choice.

It's instinct.

Like breathing when your lungs are on fire or clawing at the surface when you're drowning. It doesn't feel brave. It feels relentless.

Because finding Dad will go down as one of the worst days of my life. But the hardest?

That was twelve days ago.

The day something inside me shattered beyond repair. The day I became a ghost inside my own body.

The irony doesn't escape me—I was already mourning one death when another came to claim what little remained of me. Dad never knew about those darkest hours, about what happened that night.

How could he? I became an expert at smiling through fractured places, at carrying wounds no one could see.

The weight of untold truths clings to me like a second skin—dark and suffocating. Secrets are their own kind of grief—slow, corrosive, isolating. They carve you up piece by piece until you're not sure who's left. They leave you stranded in a loneliness no one else can see.

Now I stand in the doorway of two separate hells. One I can share—the public grief of a daughter who found her father—and one I carry alone, a private devastation no one suspects lies beneath.

But still, you move forward. Because you have to.

Tomorrow will come, indifferent and unyielding. Life will go on, dragging you with it whether you're ready or not.

It won't be the same.

It'll never be the same.

But it will go on.

And somehow, so will I.

2. Don’t Forget The Curly Fries

CHAPTER 2

DON’T FORGET THE CURLY FRIES

NORA

June 2007

PRESENT DAY

"Is there anything else?" the waiter asks, his voice gentle, like he can sense the empty chair at our table. Maybe he recognizes us. Or maybe he just sees what everyone else does—a family with a missing piece.