My wife Emily lived differently from me.
She had a softness the world never managed to harden. She thanked cashiers who ignored her, remembered birthdays nobody else cared about, and left cookies for the mail carrier every December because she believed small kindnesses mattered.
When we moved into our little rental house, I kept promising to repair the porch step, repaint the walls, and replace the scratched kitchen table before the baby arrived. Emily only smiled and reminded me that home was not paint or furniture. Then she bought secondhand curtains, washed them twice, and somehow transformed the nursery into a place filled with warmth despite how little money we had.
Seven days before everything collapsed, she gave birth to our son Noah.
He arrived furious at the world, tiny and red-faced with fists no bigger than bottle caps. Emily cried the moment the nurse placed him against her chest, and even though I tried hiding it from my family, I cried too.
