After her funeral, our house changed.
It wasn’t just quieter.
It felt abandoned.
The kitchen where Claris used to sing while making breakfast became a room nobody wanted to enter.
Her favorite mug remained on the shelf for months.
Her perfume still lingered in the bedroom.
Sometimes I would walk past her closet and catch myself expecting to hear her voice.
Then I would remember.
She was gone.
But I wasn’t alone.
I had six daughters.
Mariana was twelve.
Laura was ten.
Julia was nine.
Sofia was eight.
The twins, Beatriz and Bianca, were six.
And little Isabela was only three.
Six girls.
Six different kinds of grief.
And one father who had absolutely no idea how to help them.
Mariana became the leader.
She had always been intelligent, but after her mother’s death, something hardened inside her.
On the day of Claris’s funeral, while everyone was crying around us, Mariana took my hand and whispered something I would never forget.
