I heard Camilla’s hand fall from my husband’s arm, the small rustle of it.

And I heard, beside me, the sound I would carry with me for a long time afterward — my husband, who was never at a loss, who always had the next word ready, making no sound at all.

Damian had stopped breathing.

I had been married to him for years, and in all that time I had never once known him to be without words.

He talked his way through everything — through being caught, through being wrong, through the silences other people needed.