One person, in the house, daily, close enough that the pride never had to break — close enough to carry the laundry and hold the ladder and notice the fear before it became a fall.

It is a thing our whole system has no category for, the simple radical solution of proximity, of someone just being there, and it turned out I was already providing it and had been for months without either of us naming it.

“You want her safe,” I said, gentler now, because Sherry’s eyes had filled and I understood the fear under her fierceness.

“So do I.