There were things I loved about him that I love still, which is the most disorienting part. His laugh, which was sudden and unguarded in a way nothing else about him was. The way he remembered small details—my coffee order, my mother’s birthday, the name of my first dog. Attention to details, as I now know, can be a tool.
The first thing I noticed was a silence where there used to be sound. He stopped humming in the kitchen. It was such a small thing that I didn’t register it as a thing at all—just a season, just stress, just the particular quiet of a man with a lot on his mind.