In Time

But in the morning — and this was new, this was the difference — Hal came into the kitchen and did not pretend nothing had happened, which had been our lifelong specialty.

He stood there in his robe and he said, gruff, not looking at me, “I don’t want to do it the old way anymore, Gin.

Going quiet.

I did that for thirty years and it cost me — it cost us —” and he couldn’t finish, and he didn’t have to.

It was, I think, the bravest thing I ever watched my shy husband do: refuse, at sixty-five, the silence he’d hidden in his whole life.

I crossed the kitchen and put my arms around him.