(Sean's POV)
She loved me. Steadily, for six years, while I gave her nothing. She ironed my shirts. She cleaned humidifiers until her skin cracked. She made my coffee at a temperature I never told anyone else about. She arrived before dawn and left after dark and performed the duties of a wife when no one knew she was my wife. And I built my entire understanding of her on one drunken night's assumption I never revisited.
The study is too quiet. The HVAC hums low and constant — the room breathing for me because I'm not doing it well enough on my own. My chest is tight. Something stacked there, six years' worth, one page at a time, and the pile finally gets tall enough that I can't breathe around it.
The whiskey sits on the desk. Full. Still. The surface is flat as glass and the desk lamp
