Months passed so quietly that I almost didn’t notice the exact moment when my life stopped feeling temporary.
It wasn’t marked by a single event. There was no dramatic shift, no sudden declaration that everything had changed. It was the accumulation of ordinary days—shared mornings, unspoken routines, the way Ray’s presence threaded itself into the fabric of my life until imagining my days without him felt strange rather than inevitable.
I learned his habits without meaning to.
How he liked his coffee strong and black, usually forgotten on his desk until it went cold. How he slept lightly, always waking the moment my breathing changed. How he grew quieter when something weighed on him, not distant, just more contained. I learned the rhythm of the mansion too—the times it hummed with act
