I married a 70-year-old hospice patient to fulfill her last wish — after the funeral, her lawyer stepped aside with me and whispered, “I need you to see something.

I stood up from the chair.

I picked up the small stack of books.

The blue cardigan.

The envelope with Eleanor’s name on the outside and my ring on the inside — no, on my hand now.

I said goodbye to Patricia at the door.

I walked down the corridor I had walked down a hundred times before, past the nurses’ station, past the small common room where Eleanor and I had once watched an old film on a portable screen because she said she had never seen it and I said I hadn’t either and we had both been lying.

I pushed open the front door and walked out into the afternoon.

The air was cool.

The sky was the particular shade of blue that only happens in the hour before the light starts to change.

I stood on the front step for a moment and breathed it in.

Somewhere across the city, my mother was probably making dinner.