The youngest kept asking whether her mother could still hear her when she talked.
The father tried to answer every question.
Some days, he succeeded.
Other days, he sat alone in the garage after the children went to bed, staring at his wife's old gardening gloves until his eyes filled with tears.
He continued working because the mortgage had to be paid.
He cooked dinners because the children needed to eat.
He washed clothes, attended school meetings, scheduled medical appointments, and tried to remember which daughter preferred the blue lunchbox and which one wanted the purple.
His own grief rarely had a convenient place in the schedule.
Eventually, he realized that the family needed a different environment.
Their old home had become a museum of memories.
Every room contained reminders of the life they had lost.
He did not want to erase those memories.
He wanted to give the children a chance to make new ones.
So he began looking for a house with a yard.
Not an enormous mansion.
Not something designed to impress strangers.
Just a comfortable home where the children could run, laugh, and play without feeling that their happiness was somehow disrespectful to their mother's memory.
When he found the house in Willow Creek Estates, he knew almost immediately.
It had four bedrooms upstairs, a spacious kitchen, and a backyard enclosed by a tall wooden fence.
There was enough room for a swing set.
A concrete walkway stretched from the patio toward a small garden shed.
The previous owner had planted flowering shrubs along the rear fence, and the grass was thick enough for the boy to practice basketball.
The father stood in the empty backyard during the inspection and imagined his children playing there.
He pictured his youngest daughter drawing on the pavement.
He imagined the older girls laughing on the swings.
He saw his son dribbling a basketball while pretending to be an NBA star.
For the first time in months, the future seemed less frightening.
He bought the house.
During the first weekend, the children raced from room to room choosing where their beds would go.
The boy claimed a window overlooking the driveway.
The oldest daughter insisted on a room where she could keep her books.
The youngest wanted a bedroom with enough space for a stuffed-animal tea party.
Their father spent two evenings assembling furniture.
By Sunday night, he was exhausted.
But when he heard laughter coming from upstairs, he knew the move had been worth it.
A month later, he installed a swing set.