The following morning, Carla passed away quietly in her sleep.
The house felt strangely hollow without her.
Karl buried himself in work almost immediately after the funeral. Two days later, he told me he had to leave for a business trip that couldn’t be postponed.
I offered to come with him, thinking he might need the support.
But he shook his head.
“Not this one,” he said quickly. “It’s complicated.”
There was something in his voice that felt distant.
The morning after he left, I stood in the garden holding a shovel.
The apple tree leaned slightly to one side, its branches twisting toward the sky like crooked fingers.
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