Then I remembered the call.
A taxi driver tapped on the glass and pointed at my empty hands.
“No bag, ma’am?”
“No bag.”
I climbed in and gave him the address of the house Henry and I had built together. As the city slid past, my phone stayed silent.
Then I remembered the call. A week before Henry died, a soft voice on the line, a young woman named Claire Bennett from the local news station, asking gently if the family might speak on camera about him.
I stood in my own driveway.
“He was a very private man,” I had told her. “I’m sorry.”
She had said she understood. She had left her number.
I scrolled back through my calls until I found it. My thumb hovered a long moment above her name.
But I couldn’t press it. Not yet.
The taxi pulled away, and I stood in my own driveway staring at the house I had lived in for thirty-two years.
“You finally made it?”
The porch light was on. The curtains glowed. Inside, I could already hear my grandchildren laughing.
I opened the front door and stopped in the entry.
Small sticky labels. On the rocking chair. On Henry’s toolbox by the entry closet. On the glass front of my jewelry cabinet.
“MELISSA.”
“JASON.”
“SOPHIE.”
Names in blue marker on strips of masking tape, stuck to forty years of my life.
“Fine. Ignore me.”
Melissa came out of the kitchen with a dish towel over her shoulder. She looked me up and down.
“You finally made it? What took you so long? We had to make dinner ourselves.”
I did not answer.
“Mom, don’t be like that. We’re all tired.”
I picked up my carry-on and walked past her toward the stairs.
“Fine. Ignore me. That’s mature.”
“Your husband paid for my mother’s surgery.”
Upstairs, I closed the bedroom door behind me and sat on the edge of the bed I had shared with Henry for four decades. His flannel shirt was still folded on his pillow where I had left it before the flight to Switzerland.
I lifted it to my face and breathed him in.
Then I remembered Marcus, the young mechanic who had introduced himself after the funeral in Zurich. He stood in a suit two sizes too large, twisting his cap in his hands as though he wasn’t sure he belonged among Henry’s old friends.
