Louis' POV
It had been three weeks since my mother passed. Two weeks since Claire left. Months since I last felt like myself.
I know because I counted them. Not deliberately, not with any particular purpose, but the days had a way of making themselves known even when you weren't paying attention to them. They stacked up quietly in the background while I moved through the house and didn't move through the house and sat in rooms I couldn't remember choosing to sit in.
I had never known grief like this.
I had told myself, in the hospital, in those final days, that I was prepared. That I had seen it coming and had made my peace and that when it arrived I would be ready for it.
I was completely wrong about that. There was no preparation for the particular silence that followed. For the way a person's absence could take up more space than their presence ever had. For the way I would reach for my phone to call her before remembering, every single time, that there was no one to call.
