Empty Chairs at the Kitchen Table

There were five chairs at the table, but only four of them were ever used now.

The fifth one—the one closest to the window, where the morning light used to catch his laughter—remained untouched. A thin layer of dust had settled on its wooden slats, and no matter how many times she wiped it clean, it never felt right to sit there.

Ethan’s chair.

It had been two years since the accident. Two years of mornings where she still set out five plates out of habit, only to put one back when reality caught up with her. Two years of half-heard echoes—*"Pass the salt, Mom"*—vanishing before they fully formed.

Her husband, Mark, pretended not to notice. He drank his coffee in silence, eyes fixed on the newspaper, as if avoiding the empty space would make it disappear. Their daughter, Lily, had stopped asking when her brother was coming home.

But Claire? She still saw him everywhere.

In the way the steam curled off a mug of hot chocolate—*his favorite*. In the way the wind chimes on the porch jingled at dusk—*just like his laugh*. In the way the house creaked at night, as if it, too, was waiting for footsteps that would never come.

One evening, she found Lily sitting in Ethan’s chair, her small fingers tracing the scratches he’d left on the table years ago—a jagged line from when he’d tried to carve his initials with a butter knife.

*"Mom,"* Lily whispered, *"does it hurt less yet?"*

Claire opened her mouth to lie.

But the words dissolved before they could take shape. Instead, she sank into the chair beside her daughter, gripping her coffee cup like an anchor, and stared at the empty space across from her.

The truth was, grief wasn’t a storm you outran. It was the quiet, relentless tide that seeped into everything—the cracks in the walls, the silence between words, the untouched chair at the table where a boy should have been.

And some days, the weight of that absence was the loudest thing in the room.