Tori
He was really gone.
I had absolutely no one now.
Ray and his wife, Hallie, were kind enough to ask me if I wanted to come stay with them and their daughter, Greta, but I didn’t want to be a burden.
Ray was my dad’s partner and good friend and I knew he felt pity for me, but I didn’t need his pity. I needed my parents.
I took the week off from school to plan my father’s funeral—with the help of some of his colleagues. He was buried next to my mother in our family plot and I didn’t cry. I’d cried day and night since his death and I had nothing left.
I was so alone and I felt even more alone when Ray offered to take me home, but I declined and everyone left me there to watch them lower my father’s coffin into the ground.
Once they started tossing the dirt into the hole, I knew it
