Martha smiled.
“Every time.”
When everyone had gone, she checked the lock and walked through her quiet house.
Her photographs stood where she wanted them. Upstairs, an unfinished dress lay beside the sewing machine. On the kitchen calendar were a lunch date, a garden club meeting, and Lucas’s next visit, written there because she had invited him.
She switched off the hall light.
In her bedroom, she opened the curtains a little for morning, then settled beneath the quilt.
The door closed with the soft, familiar click her husband had made possible so many years before.
Martha rested her hand on the empty side of the bed.
“I’m still here,” she whispered.
And she slept.
