What we had was better than that.
It was two people who had lost the same person and found each other in the wreckage.
One afternoon, about six months after I read the letter, Albert and I were sitting in the garden.
The sun was warm.
He had a blanket over his legs, and I was reading a book beside him.
“Eleanor,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Thank you for coming here.
Thank you for being the person Thomas said you were.”
I reached over and took his hand.
He squeezed it once, gently, and then let go.
“I should thank you,” I said.
“You gave me back the part of Thomas I thought I’d lost.”
“What part is that?”
“The part that was still alive.”
Albert closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
The sun was on his face.
He looked peaceful.
“Your husband was a good man, Eleanor.”
“He was,” I said.
“And so are you.”
Albert smiled without opening his eyes.
“I’m trying.”
We sat there for a long time after that, in the quiet, in the sun.
And for the first time since Thomas died, the silence didn’t feel unbearable.
It felt like the kind of quiet that comes after a long storm, when the air is clean and the ground is still wet and everything that was broken is finally starting to grow again.
* * *
Some people leave us too soon, but their love doesn’t leave with them.
