By the end of the week, the farm felt different.
Not empty—worse than that. Unfinished.
Half-cut timber lay where his father had left it. The tools in the shed seemed paused mid-task, as if waiting for hands that would never return. Even the animals sensed it. The horses stamped restlessly. The chickens clustered close, as though uncertainty had a scent.
Thomas noticed everything now.
He noticed how much wood they didn’t have stacked. How the fence along the north field leaned dangerously. How the pantry, once full, held more gaps than supplies. His father had always said they were prepared.
Prepared, Thomas realized, had meant him.
His mother stopped leaving her room after the third day.
Grief took her quietly, the way winter took the land—slowly, thoroughly, without asking permission. She ate when Thomas brought food. She nodded when he spoke. But her eyes stayed somewhere far away, fixed on a life that had ended without her consent.
So Thomas stopped being sixteen.
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