Every embrace. Every whispered word in the dark. Every time she had cupped his face and told him he was hers. All of it a performance, rehearsed and delivered by a woman who had been measuring out his death by the spoonful the entire time.

“The funeral will be short,” she said, standing, smoothing her skirt. “Private. Tasteful. There’s no sense wasting good money on a dead man when I’ve got a new car to buy.”

She took a compact from her bag, checked her lipstick, snapped it shut. Then she bent and pressed a light kiss to his forehead, the way she had a thousand times.

“Goodbye, Roderick. Try not to drag it out.”

She walked to the door, opened it, and rearranged her face into grief between one step and the next. By the time she was in the corridor she was the grieving wife again, murmuring something soft to a passing nurse.

Roderick stared at the ceiling. His eyes filled and spilled over, and the tears ran down into his ears, and he let them, because there was no one to see and nothing left to protect.