He told me at noon.
Not in the kitchen. Not in the linen room corridor or the east sitting room or any of the spaces that had become ours in the specific accumulated way of places that held repeated significant conversations. He found me in the back garden.
I was harvesting the last of the autumn herbs before the cold made the decision for me. Another week and the thyme would be gone regardless of what I did with it, the temperature having crossed the threshold below which the plants gave up on the season and turned their attention inward toward whatever herbs did in winter when the ground was frozen and the garden was grey and the kitchen had to make do with what had been preserved in the months before. I had been meaning to do this for days and had not done it because there had always
