For Linda, turning sixty was meant to echo her husband’s old dream of a “loud house”—a table crowded with six children, laughter spilling into every corner. Instead, it began in silence. Five years after her husband left to “find himself” overseas, Linda had become both mother and father to her brood, now aged eighteen to twenty-eight. On her milestone birthday, she poured herself into preparing a feast—lasagna, polished china, linen napkins—each detail a prayer that her children would come. But as the evening stretched on, hope curdled into heartbreak. Texts went unanswered, calls to Mark, Jason, Caleb, Sarah, and Eliza…
