My hand was still resting on the cool kitchen counter when I finally pulled that last journal out of the box. The house felt too quiet. It had been three months since the funeral, and I was finally getting around to clearing out his desk.

Arthur loved that bird feeder. He had sat in that same wooden chair by the kitchen window every single morning since we moved into this house in 1984.

Forty years. He watched the birds, he drank his coffee, and he wrote it all down in these little pocket-sized notebooks. I used to tease him about it constantly.

“You love those finches more than you love your breakfast,” I would tell him while pouring my own coffee. He would just smile that quiet, slow smile of his and keep writing.

I figured it was just something to keep his mind sharp in his retirement. He was a creature of habit, and I suppose I took that for granted. I thought I would donate the pile of journals to the local Audubon Society. They seemed like the kind of people who would appreciate forty years of data on bird sightings and weather patterns.

I sat down in his chair. The wood felt warm, even though he wasn’t there.

I opened the last notebook. It was filled with the same neat, small handwriting as all the others. Chickadee, 7:14, overcast. Cardinal, 7:22, light rain. It was just another morning in a lifetime of identical mornings.

But then I flipped to the very last page.

My thumb hovered over the paper. It wasn’t another bird entry. It was a letter, dated three days before he passed. It was addressed to me, in his familiar, shaky, but still legible script.

I felt a chill go through me, even though the sun was hitting my back. I started reading.

He wrote about the feeder. He explained exactly why it was bolted to the post in that specific spot, right outside the window, at the exact height where I stood every morning to make my coffee.

I always thought he put it there for his own view. I was wrong.

“You never liked how you looked in the morning,” the letter said. “You always stood at the counter and rubbed your eyes and smoothed your hair like you were worried about how the world saw you.”

I stopped reading for a second. My eyes stung. I looked at the kitchen mirror on the far wall, then back at the ink on the page.

“I put the feeder there so you would have to look at something beautiful while you stood there,” he had written. “I knew if I placed it right, your eyes would focus on the birds instead of your own reflection.”