Every flicker of loss mastered before it could show.

Every warm smile held in place over a grief none of us were allowed to witness.

He had turned himself into a man made entirely of that gesture, that quiet substitution, that refusal to let his failing be seen.

And the loneliness of it, the sheer exhausting loneliness of holding all of that alone, day after day, finally reached me across the garden and brought me to tears.

Chapter 14 — Grieving in Solitude