The house had never felt so loud as it did in its silence.

Every clock tick echoed like a hammer in Mara’s skull, each second a reminder of what she hadn’t said. Dust hung in golden slants of light through the living room window, suspended in stillness, like everything else that hadn’t moved in days. No footsteps. No laughter. Not even the familiar creak of the hallway floorboards beneath his weight.

She sat on the edge of the couch, spine too straight, hands clutched tightly in her lap. The photograph on the mantle stared back at her—him smiling, her with her eyes just off-camera, forever looking at something she could no longer remember. The glass frame caught the light and for a moment, it glinted like a tear.

She hadn’t spoken since the phone call. Not a word. Not to the officer. Not to the neighbors who brought flowers. Not even to her sister, who had flown in two days ago and now walked on eggshells around her like Mara might shatter with sound.

Mara didn’t shatter. Not yet.

The silence wasn’t just outside her. It pressed inward, wrapped around her ribs, clung to her like a second skin. In the silence, she could still hear his voice. Still feel the weight of the argument they hadn’t finished. Still taste the words she never got to say.

"I’ll be back before dinner," he had said.

He wasn’t.

She stood abruptly, the motion too sharp, sending the coffee mug on the table clattering to the floor. It didn’t break—just spun once, then lay still. Even that noise was swallowed by the quiet.

Outside, the world had dared to go on. A dog barked in the distance. A car drove past. Somewhere, a child laughed. But inside, time sat heavy and unmoving.

Mara walked to the window. The oak tree in the yard bent in the wind, its branches scratching the glass like it too wanted to speak but had forgotten how.

She pressed her forehead against the cool pane and whispered the first word she’d said in three days.

" sorry"

The silence didn’t begin when he left—it began when she realized he might not come back.

Mara sat in the sunroom, wrapped in the worn gray cardigan that still carried his scent—cedarwood and morning coffee. The sleeves swallowed her hands as she cupped her knees to her chest. The air was still, the kind of still that makes you hold your breath without realizing it, like even the house was listening for his footsteps.

They always said love spoke in grand gestures. But Mara had learned the truth in quieter things—in the way he poured her tea without asking, how he left her notes in the margins of her books, how he always kissed her shoulder before getting out of bed, thinking she was still asleep.

And now, the quiet was deafening without him in it.

On the window ledge, a small note rested beneath a vase of wilting tulips. His handwriting, just three words: Don’t forget us. He had left it the morning he flew out for the assignment, tucked between pages of her latest manuscript draft. She’d found it too late—after the news broke, after the plane never made it home.