The first week without Mary felt like a blur. The second week felt like a wound that refused to heal. By the third week, Daniel began to realize she might not be coming home anytime soon.
He had never been a man to dwell on pain - life had taught him to push forward no matter what - but this was different. This wasn't the kind of hurt that could be ignored. It was stitched into every corner of his days.
The mornings were the worst. He would wake up before dawn, not because he wanted to, but because the bed felt wrong without her. Mary had always been a slow riser, taking her time to stretch and yawn before shuffling to the kitchen. Now, the silence after his alarm felt unnatural, almost hostile.
Still, he forced himself into the same routine: wake the children, make breakfast, pack school lunches. Joshua ate in silence, his eyes often fixed on the table. Grace picked at her food, her cheerful chatter replaced by quiet sighs. Caleb would ask, "Where's Mama?" at least once every morning. At first, Daniel tried to answer with hope: "She's visiting Aunt Ruth, but she'll be home soon." But as the weeks stretched on, those words began to feel like lies in his own mouth.
School drop-offs were another battle. Some parents greeted him warmly, but others had begun to keep their distance. The rumors had spread quickly - he could feel them in the way conversations hushed when he walked past, in the quick sideways glances people thought he didn't notice.
Once, at the market, an old friend of Mary's approached him. "I heard things…" she began cautiously. "About why she's not home."
Daniel cut her off. "Then you heard lies."
But even as he said it, he could see doubt in her eyes.
Running the shop became harder. Business slowed. People who had once trusted him with their money now made excuses, said they'd "come back later" but never did. A few brave ones asked outright about the accusations - Daniel always gave the same answer: "I love my wife. I've never hurt her." But in their eyes, love was not proof.
At night, after the children were asleep, he would sit in the living room with the lamp on, staring at the shawl Mary had left behind. He had tried, once, to put it away, but the drawer felt like a grave, and he wasn't ready to bury anything yet.
The hardest moments were when the children let their feelings slip through.
One evening, Grace brought him a drawing - four stick figures holding hands under a sun. "That's you, me, Joshua, and Caleb," she explained. Then, in the corner, a smaller stick figure stood apart. "That's Mama. She's far away, but she's still looking at us."
Daniel kept that picture in his wallet.
Joshua, though older, was no better at hiding the hurt. One night Daniel overheard him telling Grace, "She's not coming back. I think they made her forget us."
Caleb, still small, sometimes walked into their bedroom at night and curled up in the middle of the bed. "I'm making space for Mama," he'd say sleepily.
And every time, Daniel would tuck him in and lie there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, wondering how much longer they could live like this before something in all of them broke.
The weeks became months. And though he tried to keep the house running, to keep laughter alive for the children, Daniel could feel it - like a slow leak in a roof during the rainy season - their home was losing something vital.
What he didn't know was that, even then, Mary's family was laying the groundwork for the next blow.