(Esther's Point of View)
The door behind Matthew closed with a sound that seemed to echo through the walls and deep inside my chest. It wasn't just the door that shut. It was everything we had made. It felt like everything we had promised, hoped for, and dreamed about was gone in an instant. The kind of finality that broke something inside me that I didn't know I could ever get back. I couldn't move. I was frozen. My fingers were still curled, as if I was holding onto something, but he was gone. The cops didn't turn around. They didn't have to. They had taken him, and with him, they had taken everything.
I didn't cry. Not yet.
I couldn't.
The room was so quiet that it hurt. Too much noise. It pushed in on me, filling the space between us with a weight I wasn't ready for. I stood still,
