I can’t cry. It hurts too deeply to cry anymore. Something inside me is deeply, irreparably broken. Shattered into a million, trillion pieces. Into dust.

I’m good at faking. I have my work smile down pat. Hi, Mrs. Murphy, how are we feeling, today? Easy.

Inside, I’m hollow.

I can’t bear to look at photographs of him. Not yet. But…the details of his face are beginning to blur in my mind. The sound of his voice. His scent.

I haven’t cleaned out his drawers, or his side of the closet.

I open his shirt drawer, sometimes, just to get a whiff of his scent. Briefly, so the smell that is part of him doesn’t fade.

I wear his silver Citizen Eco-Drive watch to work. I had a few links taken out so it wouldn’t be so loose around my wrist. It’s still massive on me, which reminds me of him.

210 days

Fuck, I miss him.

I finally looked through my photos on my phone. I’d started to forget what he looked like.

I watched a few videos of us: in the park, running together. Laughing at the old man in the grass behind us, hand shoved in a plastic grocery bag, trying to catch poop as it fell out of his dog’s butt.

Christmas, two years ago. We gave each other fleece onesies and nothing else. Or at least, that was the agreement. We both broke it, though. I bought him the watch I now wear all the time, and he bought me a Pandora bracelet and a pair of earrings.

I made it through maybe fifty photos and two videos, and then I was crying so hard I couldn’t see and my heart felt like it was going to crack into pieces. Or maybe I just felt the cracks more acutely.

I’ve worked eighty hours a week minimum since I went back to work. I haven’t cooked myself food once in that time—I live on coffee, takeout, fast food, and protein bars.

Tess moved out a few weeks ago, to her sleek top-floor condo downtown. She quit her job—she’s now doing something technical involving computers from home; she’s freelancing, doing her own thing instead of working remotely for some Silicon Valley megacorporation. She’s happy. Sowing her wild oats, she says. And still worrying about me.

Don’t, I tell her. I’m fine, I tell her.

But I’m a shitty liar, which she’s well aware of. I’m not fine. Not at all.

But hell, my husband died. I’ll never be fine again.

Part III

Redemption’s Song

Letters From The Dead, Part One

DING….DONGGGGGG…

The doorbell rings, surprising me, and I nick my thumb with the whittling knife.

“Shit,” I hiss. “Ouch—motherfucker!”