The day she passed, the house felt like someone had turned off the heat from the inside. I remember standing in the living room after the funeral, staring at the mantle where her picture sat in a silver frame, and realizing the world didn’t care that my anchor was gone. The ceiling fan still spun. The refrigerator still hummed. Outside, Charleston traffic still crawled over the Ravenel Bridge like nothing had happened.
My father, Gerald Beckett, was a respected attorney with a name that opened doors in the city’s polished circles. After Mom died, he worked more. Not because he didn’t love me, but because grief made him helpless, and helplessness made him run. Courtrooms were cleaner than emotions. Cases had rules. Loss didn’t.
He started leaving early, coming home late. The house became a museum where I wandered alone, touching memories like fragile antiques. I kept my mother’s lemon cake recipe taped inside a cabinet door because it felt like proof she’d existed.
Two years later, Victoria arrived.