He packed his remaining clothes into cardboard boxes, leaving the keys on the kitchen counter just as she had. He leased a small, stark condominium downtown, surrounded by high-rises and the relentless drone of expressway traffic.
Claire moved back into the Evanston house in early spring, according to mutual friends who occasionally spoke of her. They mentioned she had replanted the overgrown rose garden, painted the front porch white, and resumed her landscape paintings.
Daniel found himself driving past the neighborhood late at night, parking half a block away beneath the old oak trees. He watched the warm, amber light glowing in her studio window on the second floor, aching to approach.
He saw her once through the glass, holding a wooden palette, laughing at something said by an unseen friend. Her posture was erect, light, and unburdened, radiating an ease he had not witnessed during their final years together.
