“You are going to be a hundred before you finish that thing, Arthur.”

I said that to him at least once a week for the better part of three decades. He would just give me that slow, easy grin of his and keep on reading.

He was a creature of habit, my Arthur. Every single night at eight o’clock, he would settle into his favorite recliner, click on the lamp, and pull that battered old novel from the nightstand.

He did that for thirty years. I suppose I should have been annoyed by it. Most wives might have been, I reckon. But Arthur was the quiet sort, and he liked his routine. It was a comfort to me, in a way, seeing him there in the soft yellow glow of the lamp. It meant everything was right in the world.

Anyway, he passed away last month. It was peaceful, thank the good Lord, just him fading away in his sleep like he was drifting off into one of his chapters. I spent the first week in a fog, just moving through the house and trying to find my footing again. The silence was the hardest part. It was so loud, if that makes any sense.

One Tuesday, I finally felt strong enough to tidy up his side of the room. I picked up his book from the nightstand, intending to put it on the bookshelf where it belonged. It felt heavy in my hands. The cover was worn smooth at the corners, the spine held together by years of careful handling.

I teased him about it one last time, even though he wasn’t there to hear it. “You really were a slow reader, weren’t you, old man?” I whispered to the empty room.

I went to shut the book, but my thumb caught on a little piece of cardstock sticking out near the middle.

I figured it was just an old receipt or a scrap of paper he’d used for a bookmark. I pulled it out. It was a plain white index card.

I turned it over, expecting to see a grocery list or maybe a phone number. Instead, there were pencil marks. Small, neat, precise little tallies. I counted them twice just to be sure. Forty-one.

My heart gave a funny little flutter. Forty-one what? He had read that book for thirty years. Maybe he was counting how many times he’d finished it? But why keep track like that?

I opened the book to the place where the card had been. Page 204. It was right in the middle of the chapter where the husband returns from the war. I had read this book myself back when we were first married, so I knew the story well enough. It was a classic, I suppose, but I never understood why Arthur loved it so much that he had to read it over and over.