It was a small, strangled sound—a man who had spent a lifetime building walls, watching them crumble in a single afternoon. Around them, the funeral home’s hushed whispers carried fragments of condolences. “Such a tragedy.” “So young.” “Leo was always the bright one.”
“So you punished me,” Elena said. “For thirty-seven years.”
Elena felt something break loose inside her—not anger, not sadness, but a kind of terrible clarity. “You didn’t want a daughter. You wanted a doll.”