Never dramatically.
Reid did very little dramatically unless a dog destroyed expensive footwear or someone repaired a boat with dangerously unsuitable wiring.
His grief occupied the smallest spaces.
A pause before answering a question about us.
A hand lifting toward me, then changing direction to adjust a pillow or move a glass.
The quick flare of hope when I recognized something, followed by the careful quiet when the memory had nothing to do with him.
He spoke about our past as though every sentence were made of thin glass.
I hated that I was the reason for such caution.
He insisted I was not.
The failed chain was responsible.
The load.
The wet road.
The angle of the trailer.
A sequence of accidents and mechanical failures that had converged on one morning.
But it was my blankness Reid met each day.
My face without six years of love behind it.
I understood why he loved the man in the photographs.
That Noah looked happy.
He looked certain.
He leaned into Reid without hesitation, as though he had found the place he meant to remain.
Sometimes I envied him so fiercely it hurt.
Sometimes I hated him.
He had taken my body and used it to build the life I wanted, then vanished before I could ask him what happiness had felt like.
Forgetting events was not the cruelest part.
The cruelty was losing the weight attached to them.
When Leah entered my hospital room, something inside me recognized her immediately. It was damaged and incomplete, but it existed. Her voice found grooves worn long before the accident.
Reid came every day carrying coffee, food, worry, and a patience so steady it frightened me.
I liked him.
I trusted him.
I wanted him close.
