Paige, our youngest, twenty-eight, three states away, deep into a nursing residency that left her too exhausted most weeks to call home.
Our marriage wasn’t perfect.
We survived two rounds of layoffs, back-to-back teenage years that felt endless at the time.
One particularly brutal winter when Roland worked nights for eight months so we wouldn’t lose the house.
I remember that winter clearly, exhaustion carving deep circles under his eyes, the way we barely spoke some weeks beyond logistics about the kids’ schedules.
But even after our worst arguments, he never once chose another room to sleep in.
Not once, in thirty-one years.
There were nights I wanted him to, honestly, nights when sharing a bed felt like the last thing either of us deserved after certain fights.
He never took that option though, some stubborn insistence on staying close even when closeness felt difficult.
So when the guest room started pulling him away in the middle of the night.
