What it says about your relationship when your partner sleeps with their back to you

The house had learned to hold its breath after Mason died. A year of silence had settled into the walls, into the unwashed coffee mugs, into the closed door at the end of the hall where my daughter lived now like a ghost in her own bedroom.

I stood at that door most mornings, palm flat against the wood, listening for the sound of her breathing.

Hazel was seventeen. She used to dance in the kitchen while I made pancakes.

After the funeral, Hazel stopped eating.

Mason used to call her Hazelnut and steal the syrup. He used to promise her, loud enough for the whole table to hear, that if no boy was smart enough to ask her to prom, he would put on a tux himself and take her.

He never got the chance. A truck on Route 9, a wet road, a Tuesday.

After the funeral, Hazel stopped eating. Then she ate too much. Then she stopped going outside.

Eli was the only person she let near her. The quiet boy from two houses down, her best friend since sixth grade, would walk over after school with her homework folded under his arm.

He never knocked too loud. He never asked her questions.