She tried not to think too hard about all the times they had fought over the pettiest of things, although they did not fight much in their marriage.
He would get a kick out of the fact that she was still annoyed by his huge bathrobe and circular glasses.
His boots were by the back door, still flecked with the marsh mud he had tracked in the last time he walked through it, a Tuesday in April, eighteen months ago.
She knew it was a Tuesday because that was the day he died, and she had memorized every detail of it, the way that you memorize the most traumatic moment of your life. Like a movie playing in your mind that you can’t stop. Like a remote control that doesn’t work, and you can’t leave the room. You’re stuck there, reliving it over and over for eternity.
She lay there for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. The fan turned in a slow, lazy circle. It needed to be dusted. She would get to it at some point. Dust was the least of her problems.
David had installed it during their first summer on Edisto because the August heat was so thick you could practically eat it with a spoon. There was nothing like Lowcountry heat.
He had gotten the wiring wrong twice before finally getting it right, and he refused to call an electrician because he was stubborn.
She had stood at the bottom of the ladder, handing him the tools and trying not to laugh every time he swore in Spanish, which his mother had taught him was the only acceptable language for profanity.
The fan worked perfectly. It had outlasted him by a year and a half, which seemed like a cruel joke that the universe specialized in lately.
She hoped she never had to replace it.
Who knew that a ceiling fan would mean so much when someone was gone?
She got up and made the bed because she always made the bed every morning.
She tucked David’s side in tight the way he liked it and then smoothed the quilt Elena had given them as a wedding gift, the one with the pattern Elena’s mother had brought from Oaxaca sixty years ago.
She went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and looked at herself in the mirror. Now she saw a woman who was fifty years old and tired in a way that sleep just couldn’t fix.
She went to the kitchen and made one cup of coffee. She used to make two cups. For months after David died, she kept making two cups out of habit.
The second one would just sit on the counter and get cold until she poured it down the sink at noon, feeling like she was pouring her husband down the sink.
Now she just made one cup.
Elena said it was progress, but Nina just called it math. Why waste money making coffee for someone who couldn’t drink it anymore?
She had enjoyed her dinner with Harper and Claire the night before. And there was a part of her that was even the tiniest bit excited about their pact.
Although they did not all share the same birthday, they had decided to celebrate together because they would all be turning fifty within just a few months of each other.
The three of them had shared all of life’s biggest events, good and bad, since they met in college. She realized what an extreme blessing and privilege it was to have strong women in her life who had supported her every step of the way, including the day that David had died.
They had been there in the aftermath, like two steady guards standing on either side of her, bringing food, helping to organize the funeral, talking Lucia through the loss of her dad, trying to keep Elena, David’s mother, at bay in the moments when Nina just needed to be alone.
But there was only so much friends could do. Grief wasn’t something you could really share with other people. It was something you had to carry alone. It was love with nowhere to go, after all. And although Harper and Claire loved David, they couldn’t share in the immense grief Nina felt at losing her soulmate.
She looked out the window in the kitchen over the marsh. David had fallen in love with the view the first time the realtor had brought them here twelve years ago.
He had stood at the window with his hands in his pockets and watched an egret lift off from the grass.
“This is it. This is where we should live, Nina. Forever.”
Just like that.
There was no deliberation, no weighing pros and cons. David made decisions with his whole soul. He walked into a room and knew.
He had looked at Nina across a crowded lecture hall during their junior year at the College of Charleston, and he knew.
And he stood at this very window and knew.
