He did not answer.

“Walter.”

He folded the brown jacket over the chair and left his wedding ring visible on the bedside table.

I stood beside him for another minute, listening to the clock.

Walter and I had been married for sixty-nine years.

We had raised children, paid mortgages, repaired roofs, argued over grocery prices, and shared a house that had become so familiar I could walk through its rooms in the dark.

He was not a man who enjoyed dramatic surprises.