PART 1 — The Unexpected Call

After forty years of marriage, I believed there was very little left for me to discover about my husband.

I knew Patrick’s habits, his moods, his favorite songs, and the small things that made him laugh.

I knew he hated being late, checked the front door twice before bed, and deliberately sang the wrong lyrics whenever a favorite song came on the radio.

I knew the stories from his childhood, the names of people he had lost, the mistakes he regretted, and the moments he was proud of.

Most importantly, I believed I knew the man himself.

Four decades seemed long enough to have reached every room in a life.

I was wrong.

The hardest goodbye I could imagine was supposed to happen with Patrick’s hand in mine.

Instead, it came through a telephone call from Nashville, hundreds of miles from our home in Minneapolis.

Patrick had traveled to Tennessee to visit Samantha, his daughter from his first marriage.

Their relationship had been complicated for years.

There were periods when they barely spoke, followed by awkward efforts to reconnect.

I had watched him become hopeful after a good conversation and quiet after one that did not go well.

Recently, something seemed to have changed.

They spoke almost every week.

When her name appeared on his phone, his expression softened before he answered.

Sometimes he went into another room and returned twenty minutes later pretending they had discussed nothing more important than the weather.