To understand what happened that morning, you need to understand the man I married, the father I lost, and the mother who never stopped believing that money was the only thing standing between a family and disaster.
My name is Olivia. I was twenty-six when I married Ethan, a mechanic who came home with grease beneath his fingernails, tired shoulders, and grocery-store flowers he always claimed were just as beautiful as the expensive ones.
He wasn’t rich.
He didn’t drive a luxury car or wear designer clothes. His work boots were often stained with oil, and he sometimes fell asleep on our couch before finishing a movie because he’d spent the entire day repairing other people’s cars.
But he remembered everything.
He remembered that I hated the sound of balloons popping. He knew I preferred my coffee with too much milk and that I cried whenever I watched a father dance with his daughter at a wedding.
