“Sometimes.”
“I do.”
Rain moved across the windshield.
Evelyn stared through the passenger window.
“I spent forty-three years waking up beside the same man. People think you adjust when someone dies. You don’t. You simply become accustomed to the empty chair.”
Something about the sentence made me uncomfortable because it required me to think of her as a person rather than an opportunity.
So I changed the subject.
A few months later, our relationship shifted.
There was no dramatic romance. No sudden kiss under moonlight. Instead, there were long evenings at the kitchen table, shared breakfasts, errands, jokes, and an increasing dependence neither of us named.
One night, Evelyn asked me directly what I was planning to do with my life.
I joked that I was trying to survive the week first.
She did not laugh.
“You should want more than survival.”
I looked around her warm kitchen, at the polished counters and the rain running down the windows.
For the first time in years, I had stability.
I was terrified of losing it.
So when Evelyn eventually admitted that people in town had started asking whether we were together, I made the decision that would define the next four years of my life.
I asked her to marry me.
I still remember the silence afterward.
Evelyn looked at me for so long that I nearly withdrew the question.
Finally, she whispered, “Do you mean that?”
I lied.
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
She covered her mouth with one hand and laughed softly through them.
I felt something twist inside me.
