“I was.”
“No.”
“Later.”
“About the chair?”
“Three wagon steps.”
He laughed weakly.
Then coughed.
Clara took his hand.
“Don’t talk.”
“I have things.”
“You’ve had fifty-one years.”
“Still behind.”
She smiled through tears.
He looked toward her.
“I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“Leaving first.”
Clara’s face broke.
“No.”
He squeezed weakly.
“Clara.”
“No.”
“You don’t apologize for dying.”
“Seems rude.”
She laughed and sobbed simultaneously.
“Idiot.”
“Your idiot.”
“Yes.”
His eyes closed.
Then opened again.
“Did you ever regret coming?”
Clara stared.
“Never ask questions you already know the answer to.”
“Humor old man.”
She looked toward the snow.
The cabin.
The photograph.
The family sounds beyond the room.
Then back.
“I regretted the train food.”
Ethan smiled.
“The blue bonnet.”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Lyle.”
“Frequently.”
“Me?”
Clara leaned closer.
“Not once.”
That was not literally true.
There had been moments.
Angry moments.
Exhausted moments.
But regret was different.
Ethan understood.
His eyes filled.
Clara kissed his forehead.
“You gave me a home.”
He whispered:
“No.”
Her brow tightened.
“We made one.”
Better.
Always partnership.
Clara nodded.
“We did.”
His breathing slowed.
Near dawn, Ethan opened his eyes one final time.
“Window.”
Clara looked toward it.
“Open?”
He nodded.
She laughed softly.
“For fifty years you complained.”
He smiled faintly.
Clara asked Jacob to crack the window.
Cold Wyoming air entered.
Three minutes.
Exactly.
Ethan breathed it.
Then stopped.
Clara held his hand long afterward.
Nobody asked her to let go.
Grief at seventy-six felt nothing like grief at twenty-five.
When Samuel died, grief had ripped Clara away from innocence.
When her mother died, grief emptied the world.
When Ethan died, grief removed half the language she used to describe ordinary days.
She reached for comments only he would understand.
Saw things she wanted to tell him.
Found herself annoyed and then remembered there was no one left to aim the irritation toward.
For months, she woke before dawn and listened for his boots.
Nothing.
The house remained full.
Children.
Grandchildren.
Workers.
Yet his absence had physical dimensions.
The old chair.
His coat hook.
A coffee mug with a chipped handle.
The window he used to close immediately after her three minutes expired.
Lucy stayed.
Mary came often.
Jacob handled the ranch.
Clara tried to make everyone leave her alone.
They refused strategically.
One evening Lucy said:
“You taught us belonging doesn’t require becoming inexpensive.”
Clara looked suspicious.
“Yes.”
Lucy continued.
“So stop trying to make your grief convenient.”
Clara stared.
“Did you rehearse that?”
“A little.”
“Annoying.”
“Genetic.”
Clara laughed despite herself.
Then cried.
That became the pattern.
Not healing exactly.
Living.
She began writing.
At first letters to Ethan.
Ridiculous.