“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
She smiled.
“I want to.”
Then she told me she was bringing the grandchildren on Sunday so David could show them his workshop.
He hadn’t been out there since early in his illness.
I hadn’t even thought to ask whether he wanted to go. Karen had.
And once again, I realized how much help I had denied her while insisting I was protecting her.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For everything.”
She looked at me.
“Dad told me to wait.”
“I know.”
“He said eventually you’d reach the point where you were ready. He said pushing you before then would only make you more determined to handle everything alone.”
“He knows me.”
“Almost annoyingly well.”
“Don’t tell him that.”
“I’m telling him that too.”
She kissed my cheek and left.
That night, I sat beside David’s bed.
His old Seiko rested on the nightstand.
Earlier that week, I had quietly taken it to a repair shop.
The scratched crystal had finally become difficult to read.
So I replaced it.
The new glass was perfectly clear.
You could see the hands again.
I looked at my husband sleeping in the house we had shared for forty-four years.
The man who had spent decades fixing broken things.
The man who had anticipated my limits before I was willing to admit I had any.
The man who had written a letter, carefully hidden it behind a drawer, recruited our daughter, spoken to our financial adviser, and trusted that someday I would find everything exactly when I needed it.
I thought about Akron in 1978.
A hardware-store aisle.
A twenty-six-year-old electrician who noticed a confused woman staring at weatherstripping.
Medium density.
The right fit.
I turned off the lamp.
Then I climbed into bed beside him.
David’s warmth was familiar in a way almost nothing else in life was.
Outside, the February night remained cold.
The furnace hummed quietly downstairs.
David had adjusted it years ago so it wouldn’t rattle.
Of course he had.
In the morning, Marcus would come.
Karen would call.
I would eat breakfast.
I might read for an hour.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly, winter would begin moving toward spring.
For the first time in a long time, that felt like enough.
There are kinds of love that announce themselves loudly.
And then there is another kind.
The kind that notices the draft around a door.
