After my husband’s funeral, I returned home with my black dress still clinging to my skin. I opened the door… and found my mother-in-law and eight family members packing suitcases as if it were a hotel.

A month later, I walked alone through the historic district at sunset. St. George Street glowed the way it does when the tourists thin out and the city starts sounding like itself again.

I stopped in front of the café where we once sat and argued about whether private people are born that way or made.

“Made,” Bradley had said. “Usually by surviving the wrong kind of attention.”

He had been right about that too.

When I got home, the condo was quiet.

My quiet.

I placed fresh flowers beside his urn. Opened the windows. Let the humid Florida air drift through the rooms.