My name is Hannah Reeves. My daughter is Emma. Six months before that night, my husband, Captain Daniel Reeves, died on the other side of the world in a place whose name I still cannot say without tasting metal at the back of my throat. Since then, every ordinary thing had become split down the middle, half before and half after. Before, I had been one of those women who assumed there would always be a next Christmas, a next parent-teacher conference, a next summer, a next argument over who forgot to switch the laundry, a next chance to roll my eyes at my husband’s jokes and then laugh anyway. After, time had become stranger than grief itself. It dragged and lurched. It made simple mornings feel impossible and impossible moments feel strangely manageable, as if the worst thing having already happened left the world free to pile on absurdities because, really, what more could it do.
I had not wanted to bring Emma to the father-daughter dance.
