The candle on my bedside table flickered. The room filled with the warm, living dark of an October evening. Somewhere in the house — I would never know exactly where, it was just a habit of the old walls, the way old houses settle and breathe — there was a soft creak.
And for one moment, just one, it sounded like someone I loved settling into the chair beside me, the way he used to, saying nothing, needing nothing, just being there.
I opened my eyes and looked at his photograph and smiled.
“I kept it,” I whispered.
The candle burned steady. The curtains moved in the evening breeze. Outside, the oak tree swayed, and somewhere a child laughed, and the world — my world, the one I had built and lost and fought for and reclaimed — turned gently, peacefully, toward night.
