My husband got custody after making me look like an unfit mother… then our 6-year-old son raised his hand in court and asked, “Who will my little sister, who’s in the freezer, live with?”

PART 3

From that moment on, Claire’s pain changed shape.

For seven months, it had been an abyss. A mother swallowed by absence. She lived in an apartment where every object cut: Zoé’s pink boots by the entrance, her bowl with a blue rabbit, the hair clips stored in a cookie tin, the little coat hung too low in the hallway. She hadn’t dared wash her pillowcase because she thought she could still smell her skin on it.