Calla was supposed to be my wife. Back then, she was the heart of the house, the one who could soothe a toddler with a song and stop an argument with a single look. But seven years earlier, the police found her car near the river, the driver’s side door open, her purse still inside, and her coat draped over the railing above the water. Hours later, they found Mara, then eleven, barefoot by the roadside, freezing and unable to speak. When she finally spoke weeks later, all she did was repeat that she remembered nothing. There was never a body, but after a ten-day search, we buried Calla anyway. And I was left trying to hold together ten children who suddenly needed me in ways I’d never imagined.
