Part 02
The morning after he asked me to leave his own house, the sun rose like nothing had happened.
It slipped through the kitchen window and landed on the same chipped countertop where I had cried into my coffee the day before. Light does not pause for grief. It does not negotiate. It simply arrives, steady and unapologetic, and asks what you plan to do with it.
Bill woke early. Earlier than usual. I heard the floorboards creak before I heard his voice.
“Martha?” he called, uncertain, like a man testing a word he was not sure still belonged to him.
I froze with my hand on the kettle.
“Yes,” I answered, careful not to sound hopeful. Hope has learned how to bruise me.
He stood in the hallway wearing the same plaid pajama pants, his hair sticking up at the crown the way it always had, even when he was young and convinced hair cream could fix anything. He looked at me, eyes searching, then relief softened his shoulders.
“There you are,” he said. “I thought I lost you.”
I did not tell him that yesterday he had already let me go.
I just smiled and poured the water.
We ate breakfast at the small table by the window. Toast. Scrambled eggs. The radio low. He buttered his bread with too much care, tongue pressed against his lip in concentration, the way he used to help the kids with math homework. He looked up suddenly.
“Did I ever tell you,” he asked, “that I was married once?”
I nodded. “You did.”
She is always the same. Ellen. Texas. A girl frozen in amber, untouched by decades, untouched by disease. I have learned that jealousy has no place here. You cannot compete with a memory that never grows old.
“She was real pretty,” he said. “Had a laugh you could hear from down the block.”
“So did I,” I said gently.
He studied me, puzzled, then smiled. “You do too.”
It was enough.
After breakfast, Sarah insisted on organizing the medication cabinet. She lined up pill bottles like soldiers and labeled everything in thick black marker. She tried not to cry while she worked. I tried not to watch her hands shake.
“I’m scared to leave you alone with all this,” she said quietly.
“I’ve been alone with it for years,” I answered. Not bitter. Just honest.
She stayed three days. On the fourth morning, she hugged me longer than necessary and promised to call before lunch. When the door closed behind her, the house inhaled and did not exhale.
That afternoon, Bill wandered into the backyard. I found him standing beneath the oak tree, fingers tracing the carved letters like braille.
“Who did this?” he asked.
“You did,” I said. “For us.”
He squinted. “I must have loved her.”
“You did.”
“And you?”
“I’m still here.”
He nodded, satisfied, as if that solved something important.
That night, he woke screaming.
Not Ellen. Not his mother.
Vietnam.
It has returned lately, sharper, louder, like his mind is emptying its drawers in no particular order. I held his shoulders while he thrashed, whispering his name until he found it again. When he finally collapsed against me, shaking, he cried like a boy.
“I’m sorry,” he said over and over. “I’m sorry I forgot.”
I kissed his forehead. “You didn’t forget the important part.”
He fell asleep gripping my nightgown, afraid I would disappear if he loosened his hand.
The next week, the insurance letter arrived.
Not a call. A letter.
Polite. Clinical. Final.
Denied.
I sat at the kitchen table with the envelope unopened for nearly an hour before I could bring myself to tear it. Bill watched me from the living room, sensing something was wrong but unable to name it.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Just paperwork,” I said.
That night, after he went to bed, I pulled out the old shoebox from the closet. The one with photos and cards and folded notes written in handwriting that still knew where it was going. I found a picture of us at the beach in 1989. He is holding our son on his shoulders. I am squinting into the sun, laughing at something I cannot remember, but I know it was him.
Love leaves fingerprints everywhere. Even when memory scrubs the surface clean.
I sold the second car two days later.
Mrs. Jenkins drove me to the bank. She did not ask questions. She never does. Grief has taught her when silence is the kindest language.
That evening, Bill and I danced again in the living room. Slower this time. He rested his head against my shoulder.
“You’re familiar,” he said softly.
“So are you.”
The bad days come more often now.
There are mornings he does not recognize the house. Afternoons he cannot remember how to swallow without being reminded. Evenings where sundown steals what little clarity the day offered.
Once, he looked at me and asked, “Are you the nurse?”
I answered, “I am the woman who loves you.”
He nodded, accepting the explanation like it was enough information for one lifetime.
Tom came that weekend with the kids. The house filled with noise and crumbs and small hands tugging at Bill’s sleeves. He laughed more with them than he does with anyone else. Love finds its way through cracks we did not know were there.
Later, after they left, Bill sat quietly on the couch.
“I like when they visit,” he said. “They feel like home.”
“They are home,” I answered.
He frowned. “Then why do I feel lost?”
I did not answer that one. Some questions are not meant to be solved. Only held.
Weeks pass in strange increments. Not days. Not hours. Moments. A smile. A confusion. A recognition. A loss.
One afternoon, while helping him into the bath, he touched my arm and said, “You’re very kind. My wife would have liked you.”
Something inside me folded in on itself. Not breaking. Folding. Making room.
“Thank you,” I said.
That night, as I lay awake listening to his breathing, I understood something I had been resisting.
Marriage is not the story we tell at weddings.
It is not the promise of forever.
It is the decision, made again and again, to stay present when the other person cannot meet you where you stand.
To love without being known.
To hold the weight when no one is watching.
I do not know how much longer this road is.
I do know that tomorrow morning, I will make the coffee. I will answer when he calls for Ellen. I will sit beside him when the fear comes. I will keep his world stitched together with routine and patience and quiet devotion.
Because even if he forgets my name again, even if he asks me to leave, even if he never knows who I am tomorrow, I know who I am to him.
I am the one who stayed.
This is not the ending I imagined.
But it is still a love story.
And it is still ours.
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