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“Would you be able to find me the companion volume by tomorrow?” the man says. “I leave for Warwickshire at twelve bells.”

While there is a crackle to his wearied voice, I can instantly recognize the resonance of the actor he had once been. And that he says he leaves for the county of Warwickshire, it must be him. I catch my breath. My heart pounds. I take in his entire countenance. His eyelids have fallen sleepily over his orbs, he’s stouter than he was, and he is completely bald on the top with a most unattractive gray fringe around his ears. How does one change so severely?

I am filled with a momentary pity at the absolute downtrodden sight of him. His cloudy eyes show the deep wounds of life—the death of his son, the legal troubles with his playing company, the departures of players, his intermittent failures on the stage. I’ve paid attention to the gossips over the years; he hasn’t had a success in ages. He looks so fragile and weary, so unlike the man I once allowed to do the most terribly wonderful things to my body, and I to his.

I walk within three yards of him and weigh the cost of saying something. How fascinating it might be to test the crust of our old, wounded hearts—as one might pull at an old scab with the nails. The sting might feel unusually titillating. No, no, no. I certainly don’t want him to see me like this, circles under my eyes from crying, my hair in disarray. It’s best to leave his memory of my beauty intact and continue to walk away. But then at my back, I hear his voice call to me.

“Rose!” he shouts. “Mistress Williams!”

Just hearing him say my name sets off a whirlwind of emotions. I don’t think I can bear this on top of my melancholy. I turn and bow my head. Blessed Mary, what will I say to him? I will make an excuse, say I have no time, that I have an appointment with the dress maker. But I can see in his face that he has taken note of my black widow’s weeds. His visage grows pathetic, and he takes my hand most gently.

“Oh dear,” he whispers. “Please tell me it’s not Jamie?”

I intend indifference, but hearing him pronounce my late husband’s name, stops me. Despite my feet’s desire to escape, my mouth betrays me.

“I’m afraid it is. He passed just four months now. It appears that my husband’s last ‘false illness’ was false in its falseness.” Facing the Poet, I try to squeeze a smile from my lips, but it won’t hold. I suddenly crumble into a small bout of tears. “I don’t know what’s come over me. I’m just a bit lost I’m afraid.”

I am stunned by my weeping. Why am I behaving like such a child? And in front of him, of all people? A man who, with me, made a cuckhold of my husband? A man who turned me into a sniveling, pathetic heap all those years ago. I should be raging. Instead, I allow him to see me like this. Fie, on you gods of melancholy!

“I’m so dreadfully sorry, Rose.” The Poet takes my hand as a friend and squeezes, and my ire once again falls away. “Jamie was such a good man. Steadfast.”

“He was steadfast,” I say, pulling myself together.

“And so honorable,” he adds.

“Too honorable for one such as me,” I say.

“No,” he says. “Stop that, Rose—”

“It’s true, and you know it. I was probably the only wife in London who regretted having such a dreadfully loyal husband.”

He shook his head, smiling. “He made the rest of us look like such rubbish.”

“He did and you were.” And there they are again. Tears are once again falling in front of the Poet. “Oh, God’s teeth! It is absurd. When shall I ever stop lamenting? It’s the black bile, I tell you. That’s why I’m here. There is a wise woman somewhere in this yard who they say can balance my humors. I simply have to find her … I’m so sorry.” I gulp air to try and stanch another onslaught.

“It’s fine, Rose. Truly. After my son’s death it took me years to find some respite from the grief. Do not be embarrassed.”

“But I am,” I say. “I should be past this by now, and yet every day, several times, I end up in a blubbering puddle. It’s absurd! It’s not as if he is the first husband on Earth to die.”

“Tush! Do you think you are not human? That you would not feel his loss? Whether you believe it or not, you clearly loved him.”

“Yes, of course I did. I suppose.” And while I try to stop myself from speaking further, I can’t. “But here’s the thing most strange: It’s not the loss of Jamie’s affection I miss, but rather all his silly tendencies that I used to find annoying, like his foolish smile as he sipped his soup like a beef-witted clod, or his periodic yammering about the superiority of using green oak for construction.”

The Poet laughs gently and says, “I’ve heard him go on about that one.”

“Indeed,” I say, smiling that someone else remembers. “The thing is, no matter how many times I’d roll my eyes and yawn in exaggerated boredom to get him to stop, he’d never even notice. He’d just continue onward, oblivious, with that small smile upon his face. How I’d kill to hear Jamie’s muttering and blathering about that blasted green oak just one more time.”

And now I am balling like a babe once more.

The Poet pulls a handkerchief from his doublet pocket and hands it to me, saying, “After you and I parted, I saw Jamie repairing the stage one day, speaking to some of the other carpenters. They were complaining about their wives as men do, but Jamie wasn’t. Without any sort of boasting, he simply told them of how happy you made him, and about how wise you were, and how you’d berate him for this and that but then always make him laugh.”

I gasp for air. I can barely get out my next sentence. “You truly heard him say that? Truly?”

“By God, I did!” he swears. “No, yours was not an etching of some false perfect marriage. No long-lasting love is without struggle. But there was true caring there.”

There is an earnest tone to the Poet’s voice. Strangely, this brief conversation with a man for whom I had considered leaving my husband, is the first moment I feel Jamie’s presence again. Because of this casual remembrance, I finally believe that Jamie knew I loved him. It is also the first time I have spoken such things out loud to another human, and suddenly I can breathe.

After a moment my head begins to clear. I feel the past and the present join themselves, and once again I meet the Poet’s eyes, and he is who he was again, and I am who I was.