The smell of the kitchen always hits me first. It is that sharp, bitter scent of coffee and the heavy, fatty heat of a cast iron skillet. I sat there in the dark. It was 5:15 in the morning. I did not move. I just listened to the house settle around me.

My eyes are shot. The doctor said the cataracts are like a film over my world, making everything blurry and dim. I have to go under the knife on Thursday. It is just a routine thing, or so they say. But I have been on edge for three days. My hands have been shaking, a fine, nervous tremor that I cannot seem to stop.

I grew up in a house where you did not talk about being scared. You did not talk about the big things. You just did the work. My wife Joyce was the same way. She was steady. She was the bedrock of this family, even when we had nothing but lint in our pockets and holes in our boots.

Joyce passed away two Marches ago. It was a Tuesday. I remember because the trash truck was coming down the street, and she was complaining about the neighbor’s dog barking at the hydraulic lift. She went inside to get a glass of water and she just sat down in her chair and that was it. No long goodbye. No hospital bed. Just gone.

I have spent the last two years trying to fill the silence. It is not working. The house is too big and the hallways are too quiet. I keep expecting to hear her humming in the laundry room or the sound of her slippers on the linoleum. I don’t hear them. I just hear the wind.

At 6:15, the headlights swung across the living room wall. They were bright, cold, and intrusive. I knew it was Heather before the door even opened. She has that same quick, purposeful walk that Joyce had. She let herself in with her own key. She didn’t say a word. She just walked straight into the kitchen.

I stayed in the dark. I wanted to see what she would do. I heard the cabinet open. I heard the scrape of the heavy skillet against the burner. The sizzle started a moment later. It was a rhythmic, popping sound that brought me right back to 1976.

I was twenty-six back then. We had just found out about the layoffs at the plant. I was sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to face the day. I sat at this very table, staring at the grain of the wood, trying to figure out how to tell her we were going to lose the house.