The kitchen, lights out and desolated, was on her right; Simon’s double office doors were to the left. A numbness spread out from her belly through her limbs, and she placed one hand on the table for support. The heat from her hand created a moisture vapor on the shiny wood surface. Worried about the fingerprints, she snatched her offensive hand away and cradled it between her breasts.

Simon’s door was half open. He knew she’d be coming. She took a deep breath of the rose-heavy air and pushed his door with one hand, more than a little terrified of how she might find him. “Simon?” she whispered, glancing around the darkened room. “It’s me, Eileen,” she continued, thankful for the improved clarity of her speech. She wasn’t sober by any stretch, but at least the outward signs of her drunken stupor were shoring up.

Movement in the far corner of the room caught her attention. It was Simon looking disheveled in a wrinkled shirt, his hair standing out from his head in a riot of angles. He sat in a brown leather wingback placed in the corner where the wall met a bookshelf that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. He had a book spread open in his lap, but his eyes stared blankly out into the room.

She moved closer on quiet steps, bending her head to try to intercept his frozen stare. “Simon?” she whispered. “It’s me…Eileen.”

His eyes shifted and met hers. “Hi, Eileen,” he whispered back, his voice hardly more than a breath. His eyes, still glassy and unfocused, welled up fast before tears spilled down his cheeks and disappeared into the gruff of his unshaven face. He shook his head once and spread his hands out over the pages of the open book in his lap before his fingers curled around the edges and gripped it so hard she heard pages tear.

“This isn’t happening,” he whispered. It reminded Eileen of something Ryan or Cameron might say in response to tragedy. Simon looked up at her, pleading, as if she somehow had the power to set everything right, turn back time, bring his wife back. “I can’t… I can’t do this,” he said like it was a matter of fact. “It’s too hard.”

She stood watching him, frozen herself in disbelief. She couldn’t do this either. After several ragged breaths, Eileen managed to make her body move. She walked toward him, took the book from Simon’s lap, closed it, and placed it on the bare, clean surface of his wide desk. The familiar dust jacket with its bold gold font and her sister’s name caught her eye, A Perfect Life, Clare Collins.