For twenty years, Martin believed he had learned to live with loss. At seventy, he had endured more grief than he ever imagined, and he thought time had softened its sharpest edges. The memory of the winter storm that took his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson had become a quiet part of his life—painful, but accepted. Only his granddaughter, Emily, remained, the small miracle who slowly helped him rebuild a sense of family.
He raised her with patience, believing that some questions were better left unanswered, and that healing sometimes meant moving forward without revisiting the past. As Emily grew, she became observant, thoughtful, and quietly persistent. The fragments of her childhood memories of the accident had faded, replaced by silence, but something inside her never fully settled. Years later, now a young professional in legal research, she began asking questions Martin had not heard in decades.
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