Her name was Margaret Hale, though everyone called her Maggie. At sixty-two, she thought she knew every shade of her husband’s soul. Daniel Hale had been steady and reliable, a man who folded his shirts neatly and paid bills on time. Yet his final words cracked that certainty.
In the quiet of the house they had shared for four decades, Maggie moved like a stranger. Daniel’s absence hung heavy in the curtains, in the echo of his laugh. She tried to cling to the ordinary—his slippers by the door and glasses on the counter.