One evening, I found him in the garden.
He was holding an old photograph.
“Who is she?”
He looked at the picture.
“Margaret.”
His first wife.
I sat beside him.
“Do you miss her?”
“Every day.”
I expected jealousy.
Instead, I felt sadness.
“You loved her.”
“Very much.”
He turned toward me.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
I looked at him.
“I know.”
He folded the photograph carefully.
“People think love has a limited amount. As if loving someone new means you loved someone before less.”
He shook his head.
“It doesn’t work that way.”
That was the night I realized I loved him.
Not because of his house.
Not because of his bank account.
Because I had begun caring about the parts of him that money couldn’t fix.
His loneliness.
His memories.
His fears.
His regrets.
And then he got sick.
It started with fatigue.
He blamed his age.
Then he started losing weight.
Then came the tests.
The hospital.
The specialists.
The conversations that stopped whenever I entered the room.
Six weeks later, Richard was dying.
I remember sitting beside his hospital bed one night.
He was awake.
Barely.
“I’m scared,” I whispered.
He opened his eyes.
