Let’s Keep It Real
Tom and Susan sat with towels at their eyes, each trying to be the strong one while failing in private. Their other children wiped their cheeks in the kitchen and stood close enough to offer help without words. Grandpa Joe and Grandma Ruth, who had seen plenty of hard times, kept their seats and watched the family move through what had become ordinary—sudden, inexorable—grief.
The whole town settled into a quieter routine, as if the baseball field, the diner and the church had collectively taken a breath. Neighbors brought casseroles and coffee, kept their words short and steady. There was no public collapsing, no theatrical wailing—just people showing up, offering a hand, a nod, an envelope, a casserole dish.
They had lost their girl—Tia—too soon. She had been the kind of kid who made neighbors smile when she passed on the sidewalk and who took small pride in wearing her best dress to Sunday school. She was the youngest in a big family, the one who kept things light with a joke or a silly face. Now that light was gone.
Tia’s life was small and bright in a way familiar to Midwestern towns: school, part‑time shifts at the café, a handful of good friends, a calendar full of plans. In the spring of that year she’d turned sixteen, an age when the world starts to look full of practical possibilities—learning a trade, finishing a degree at the community college, heading off to see more of the country.
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