I smiled each morning as the sunrise brightened our bedroom in the hope that Nick’s perfunctory mood that he’d worn since the ultra-sound had also thawed. Each morning I’d reach for him — some mornings he’d be there — and on others he’d be up already, and without a kiss good-bye, he’d begin his work on the new restaurant. He practically came to bed after me and then got up before the sun. The summer of our third year of marriage brought with it no improvement. Nick’s head hung as low as it had six months ago, and his communicative skills were seemingly stunted as he limited himself to single word answers, if any answers at all. I allowed him his grieving; the blow he had been dealt would be enough to bring even Goliath to his knees. I spent many nights alone because Nick worked later than he ever had in the past. I sat thinking, devising a plan to coax him out of the hole that he’d climbed into, and it was on one of these nights that I realised that he actually was the most robust of men that I’d ever known; for Nick to be brought so low by something so uncontrollable must have devastated him beyond anything that I could imagine.
