Eventually, I learned to live with the pain. It didn’t disappear overnight. I simply decided to move forward and kept making that decision every day.
I started smiling again around my family so they would stop worrying about me. I ate more at dinner so Mom wouldn’t monitor every bite. I laughed when Eddy cracked jokes in the car on the way to school.
Life slowly returned to its routine.
Eddy graduated first and left Ridgefield for college. The house felt strangely quiet without him, and it dawned on me that we were all slowly scattering in different directions. Chris was already building his career, flying from city to city for business meetings.
By the time senior year rolled around, people started looking at me differently.
Maybe it was because Eddy was no longer around. Maybe it wa
