You wouldn’t know it, given how we bickered. But I was part of the package when you married my best friend. You didn’t like that I knew more about cigars than you did, and I didn’t like your unwavering stance on the death penalty. We were supposed to argue for many, many years to come. You weren’t supposed to die at seventy-eight.

She’d been prepared for Ed’s passing. Her sweet, quiet husband, living so long with colon cancer. Of course she sobbed that morning when she woke to find him blissfully silent, after so many weeks of the hospice workers giving him painkillers that dried out his mouth and scratched his throat, forcing him to make the unmistakable sound of approaching death.

But Tom, even with his smoking habit, always seemed so solid and healthy that death wasn’t a possibility. Lung cancer, however, disagreed.

“Lynn?” Roxy’s voice was quieter when she called out again. She really was trying to be a bit less blunt these days, more compassionate. Age was supposed to soften people naturally. Roxy was waiting for that to kick in.

She walked through the kitchen and down the hall to Tom’s study, swallowing her desire to kick aside the oriental rugs that lined Lynn’s wood floors throughout the house.

You don’t get it, she thought as she carefully avoided the curled edges of the runners. If I fell or tripped, and truly hurt myself, I couldn’t bear the thought of you always alone in this big old house, wrapped up in your secretive work and worrying about your family. You are the strongest person I’ve ever known, Lynn Roseworth. But you need me up and mobile.

The door to Tom’s study was closed, signaling that Lynn was deep into whatever she was working on.

Roxy wanted to pound on the door in irritation, but instead took a deep breath and quietly knocked. “Hey Sis, I’ve been calling for you. Can I come in?”

When there was no response, Roxy tried the handle. If it was locked, she would have no choice but to make a minor scene. Lynn might have her headphones on, with Yo-Yo Ma blaring, oblivious to anything from the outside world.

When the handle turned, Roxy peeked in. “Lynn?”

The room smelled so much like Tom, a mix of tobacco and books, that another wave of sadness brushed over her. She understood why Lynn chose to spend so much of her time in here. Roxy often found herself going into the basement of her own home, carrying whatever she was reading at the time, to walk past her husband’s workbench. Beyond Ed’s woodworking tools and amongst the last of the scattered shavings of pine, she would sit in the maroon recliner she’d banished to the underworld of their house. She’d inhale deeply, open the book, and find the words blurred by tears.