So he asked about my day.

I told him about a difficult meeting, a broken washing-machine hose, and a woman at the grocery store who had mistaken me for someone else.

He listened as carefully as if I were explaining a surgical breakthrough.

It felt unexpectedly intimate.

PART 22

Our next anniversary arrived quietly.

For years we had treated it as a date that could be postponed around hospital schedules.

This time Callum insisted we mark it, though he was too tired for a restaurant and preferred home.