The silence after my question felt longer than the years we’d spent avoiding what we both knew was broken. His hands trembled on the table, wedding band glinting under the kitchen light that used to shine on school projects and birthday cakes. When he finally spoke, his words weren’t defensive—they were small, fragile. He admitted he’d been afraid of dying alone, of wasting whatever time he had left, and in his fear he’d mistaken my distance for indifference.
Liv’s confession landed just as hard. She said she’d always felt like an intruder, convinced I’d already closed the door on him. In trying not to push, she’d stayed quiet, and her silence looked a lot like smugness from my side of the table. We didn’t fix everything that night. But we did rewrite something more important than a will: the story of who we still were to each other.
