For five years I had been alone inside my marriage in the specific way the controlled are always alone, surrounded by a person who filled every room and left no space for anyone else.

And now, in the one place I’d have least expected it, from a man who could move a single muscle, I had been handed a partner in the dark. I’m here, the squeeze said. I know.

You’re not alone in this. It is a strange thing to say that the loneliest years of my life ended at the bedside of a man who couldn’t speak — but they did.

Whatever courage I found in the hours after, I found because for the first time in half a decade, someone had reached across the dark and taken my hand and told me, with the only word left to him, that I was not by myself.

Then I texted Devon that I was running home to shower and get clean clothes.

Chapter 5 — The Decoy