I signed the lease alone for the first time at eighty-six. The barn lease, the one we'd always done together with two shaky signatures.
The agent brought it by at noon. I waited until midnight to put pen to paper. The kitchen light hummed.
Her tomato pincushion still sat on the windowsill, needles rusting into it. I couldn't move it. Couldn't touch it.
I thought of that rained-out Little League game in '78, how we sat in the truck watching it pour, not talking, just being.
We never needed words. Now the silence is different. Thicker.
If I could tell my younger self anything, it would be this: sign everything together while you can. Hold the pen for her when her hands ache.
Tonight the lease is in my name only. But at 3 a.m., the moon through the window looks the same as it did when she was beside me.