The hours that followed were strangely quiet.

Too quiet.

Marga spent the rest of the morning drawing a new picture, humming softly as she colored in the edges of a small house with a crooked roof. She kept glancing at me with that same glittering excitement, as if she were waiting for me to say, Okay, sweetheart… today is the day.

And all the while, I moved around the house with a heaviness I couldn’t shake.

Elijah noticed it instantly.

Every time he passed by me — while wiping the ...