I said yes.
The next day a priest came to the apartment, an old friend of the hospice, and married us in Carl’s small living room with the taped-up Scrabble box still sitting on the shelf. I wore the only white thing I owned, a plain cotton shirt, and there were no flowers and no music and no guests, only the priest and the two of us and the afternoon light coming through the same window where I had watched Carl cheat at Scrabble a dozen times. When the priest pronounced us married, Carl took my hand and pressed it to his cheek and closed his eyes, and I have never in my life seen a person look so completely, quietly happy. As though a lifetime of waiting had finally come to rest.
He died ten days later.
I was there. I held his hand through the last of it, and near the end, when he could barely speak, he looked at me with those wet, searching eyes and whispered something I did not quite catch. It sounded like an apology. I told him there was nothing to be sorry for. He shook his head, just slightly, and then he was gone.
My grief surprised me with its depth. I had known him for such a short time, and yet losing Carl opened a hole in me that felt far older and larger than a few months of friendship could account for. I cried at his funeral, which was as small and unattended as our wedding had been, just me and the priest and a few volunteers from the hospice who had come out of kindness. I stood at the graveside and did not understand why I felt as though I were burying someone I had lost long ago.
Three days after the funeral, there was a knock at my door.
The man standing on my step was elderly and formal, dressed in a gray suit that had gone slightly out of fashion, carrying a leather briefcase that looked older than I was. He introduced himself as Carl’s lawyer and asked, with great gentleness, if he might come in.
