The notification arrived without much fanfare. No vibration. No warning. Just an inconspicuous line of text on my phone – completely normal. And that’s precisely what made it unbearable.

Eight days had passed since the funeral. Eight days in which I realized that silence is not empty—that it is oppressive, that it fills spaces, that it hums in your ears when the world stops asking how you are. I had only just begun to breathe in that silence when I saw her.

A debit from our joint bank account.

A rental car.

My heart leaped, as if something had grabbed me from behind. Of all things, a rental car. No groceries. No bill. Something deliberate. Something impulsive.

The grief instantly turned into panic.

I grabbed my keys and drove off without thinking. My hands were shaking so badly I almost missed the turn. Logic haunted me the whole time—a delay, a mistake, a system malfunction—something trivial and explainable that would set the world right again. I carried her photo on my phone like a talisman, proof that none of this could be real.

I spoke too quickly in the rental office. The employee listened with polite detachment, as one does when preparing an apology for a mistake.

Then I showed him her photo.

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