When I arrived home from work, Sara was in the bedroom; there were no lights on. Initially I had thought that I was the first to get home, but then I heard the sobbing; why was she crying?

I followed the sound, my heart breaking with every step; her pain flowing through me, not like a stream, but like short pulses of hard, icy water. I had never heard such sounds come out of her.

I pushed open the bedroom door and there she was, her entire face wet with tears, the knuckles on her left hand white where she was almost crushing her phone, and her whole body shaking with grief. She looked up at me, her eyes like deep wells in the cold ground of her ashen face and just said;

“Dad’s dead.”

The next moment she threw herself at me and clung to me so hard that I was on my knees in the doorway before I knew anything else. She was still shaking; my neck was already wet with her tears. I pushed my fingers into her hair, gently stroked her head and kissed her forehead;

“I’m so sorry darling.”

It was all I had.