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“He won’t be.”
“I don’t want him thinking money is love.”
I shook my head. “It’s not. It’s just a tool.”
“And you used it to control everything.”
“I did.”
She studied me. “And now?”
I glanced toward Ethan’s room. “Now I think some things can’t be fixed. Only… witnessed.”
Her expression shifted slightly. “That almost sounds wise.”
“I’m getting old.”
A small smile touched her lips.
It didn’t last long.
But it was there.
Winter came early.
Claire got worse.
Some days she could sit outside wrapped in blankets while Ethan showed her drawings. Some days she couldn’t leave her bed. Some days she was sharp and clear, correcting me on everything from soup to silence. Other days she drifted, calling for people who were no longer there.
Those days were the hardest.
Not because she forgot me.
Because sometimes she remembered me as I used to be.
And for a few seconds… she sounded happy to see me.
That hurt more than anything else.
Alright, we carry the same rhythm forward: deep breath, steady current, no breaks in the current until it hits the rocks.
PART 3
Claire died in March.
Not in a hospital, not under fluorescent lights surrounded by strangers, but in her own bed with the quiet dignity she had fought to keep. Rain tapped softly against the roof that night, a familiar, gentle rhythm that had once been a problem and had somehow become part of the life she built. Ethan was asleep beside her, one hand curled loosely around hers as if even in dreams he knew not to let go. I sat on the other side, reading aloud from a book she used to love, my voice steady even as something inside me began to fracture.
Her breathing changed before I was ready for it.
It always does.
There’s a moment, small and almost invisible, where the rhythm shifts, where the body begins to loosen its hold on the world. She opened her eyes once, slowly, like it took effort just to return for that final second. She looked at Ethan first. Then at me.
I leaned closer without thinking. “I’m here,” I said quietly.
Her lips moved.