“No.”
He nodded.
“Good.”
I looked at him.
“Good?”
“Apologies shouldn’t be enough by themselves.”
“What is enough?”
“Being honest after the apology.”
I sat beside him.
“Then we have work to do.”
He smiled.
“Yes.”
Douglas died eight weeks later, in the early morning, with Lucas on one side of his bed and me on the other.
There was no dramatic final speech. No sudden revelation. He was simply tired, and when his breathing grew quiet, he opened his eyes once.
“Ruthie,” he whispered.
“I’m here.”
“I remembered every birthday.”
“I know.”
He smiled.
Then he closed his eyes.
Afterward, Lucas and I returned to the cottage.
We kept it.
Not as a monument to the life we had missed, but as a place where the truth could remain ordinary. We repaired the porch, painted the kitchen, and filled the upstairs shelves with books. The wooden box stayed on the desk, no longer hidden.
