Margaret was sitting on the edge of the sofa with a blanket over her knees, though the room was warm.
Across from her, Frank turned a page of the newspaper and said, “Are you cold?”
She looked at him for a second. Forty-three years of marriage can fit inside a look like that.
“No,” she said.
He nodded and went back to reading.
There had been a time when she would have explained. She would have told him the tea had gone cold because she had made it for both of them and he forgot his cup. She would have said the photograph in her hand was from the summer they drove to Maine, back when he still reached for her hand without thinking.
She would have told him that being in the same room was not the same as being together.
But that night, she did not have the strength to teach him how to see her.
Frank lowered the paper again. “You have been quiet all evening.”
Margaret folded the corner of the old photo with her thumb.
“I know,” she said.
He waited for more. She had always given him more.
This time she did not.
She was not cold. She was tired.
