A year after my husband George died, he came back to me. I was well into the grieving process by then. I had finally started bagging up his shirts, pants, and ties for donation. Sunday afternoon, I missed my weekly excursion to trim the grass by his grave. I had gone to my neighbors' for dinner, a meal of rotisserie chicken and potatoes in warm candle light, and I didn't think about how there were only three of us. It was not until later, lying in bed—my bed, as I had started to think of it—listening to the ticking of the clock—a gift from my sister for our fiftieth anniversary—that I realized I had forgotten to go.
I resolved to visit the cemetery the next morning after breakfast. Hungry when I woke, I toasted two slices of white bread and boiled an egg. The doctor said I shouldn't eat them at all, but the thought of never eating another egg was too much to bear. I secretly consumed one or two a week. I put a thin slice of butter on the toast, where it melted into a golden puddle. I made coffee and poured a glass of orange juice.
The breakfast table was just big enough for two, stationed by the window with the morning sun. For decades we had carted it through the states, the one piece of furniture we never got rid of. In our twenties, we had gotten up late on weekends, waking at ten and lounging at breakfast until noon. In our thirties, we got up early in the brief years when we had a daughter, and reverted to late sleeping when we didn't. After we retired the table became the center of our home. It was where we ate and chatted, wrote in diaries, played cards, held hands.
I spread my dishes across the whole surface of the table, staking it out as a place for one. I sat down on the red chair, its fabric warm from the sun. I had just taken a sip of orange juice when the doorbell rang.
It was him—George—standing on the doorstep.
"Anna,"he said. "I'm so glad you're home. I seem to have lost my key."
He looked the same as I saw him last: hair thick and white, eyes alert despite the looseness of his skin. He was wearing his favorite red and blue plaid shirt. He blinked quickly, the way he always did when he found the sun too bright. I thought it was a hallucination, a yet-undocumented part of the grieving process. I might be a grief revolutionary, a pioneer.
"Don't worry," I said calmly. "There's another spare." I turned to go into the kitchen, the hardwood floor creaking beneath my feet. I went to the basket by the phone and fished through envelopes, coupons, and scribbled notes until I felt the metal shape at the bottom. I turned to offer the key with an amused, outstretched hand.
George was still there.
"Thanks." He took the key and slipped it into his pocket. He was eying my breakfast, the extravagant meal spread only for me across the table.
"I didn't realize you'd be home so soon. I'll make more," I said. I shuffled the dishes closer to one side of the table and removed a stack of mail from his chair. He sat down while I put more water in the pot to boil another egg. Facing the stove, I realized that I didn't know what else to say.
"That outfit looks great on you," George said. "What is that, some kind of dress thing?"
"It's a skirt and a new top. I went shopping last week." He flipped through a newspaper while I lowered a spoon with an egg gently into the pot. I set the timer for eight minutes. I popped some bread in the toaster and poured him a cup of coffee.
We were in the middle of eating when the doorbell rang again.
