The clock on the kitchen wall has a little tick that sounds like a heartbeat. It hits 5:40 every afternoon and I hold my breath. That was when Eric used to pull his delivery truck into our gravel driveway, the brakes squealing just a little bit, every single day for six years.

He died on that same stretch of road two years ago. The state trooper told me it was quick. I reckon that is supposed to be a comfort, but it just feels like the world ended in a heartbeat.

My husband, Gene, says we need to stop living in the past. We have been married forty years now. We have grown into each other like two trees planted too close together, all tangled roots and bent branches. Gene keeps telling me we should sell this house. He says the place is too big for two people, but I know what he really means. He wants to stop looking at the empty chair at the kitchen table. He wants to stop hearing the silence.

Then there is Rosie. She is a shepherd, a big, sturdy girl with eyes that seem to see more than she lets on. Every evening at 5:41, she climbs up onto the back of the sofa in the living room. She presses her nose against the glass of the window and she waits. She waits for that truck to pull in. She lets out a little huff when it doesn’t happen. It kills me. I spent my whole career nursing strangers through their worst nights in the hospital, and I still cannot figure out how to nurse that poor dog through 5:41.

Yesterday was the breaking point. The house felt heavier than usual, like the air itself was trying to push me down. Rosie wouldn’t settle. She kept pacing the hallway, her nails clicking against the floorboards, back and forth, back and forth.

She stopped in front of the hall closet. She started scratching at the door, her whine getting higher and more desperate by the second.

“Stop it, Rosie,” I said, my voice sounding thin in the quiet house.

She didn’t listen. She just kept at it, her claws catching on the wood. I walked over to pull her away, but she jammed her nose into the gap at the bottom of the door and pushed. She managed to nudge it open just enough to crawl inside. I followed her, annoyed and tired, ready to drag her out by her collar. I found her buried under a pile of old winter coats. She was nudging at a navy blue work jacket, the one Eric wore every day.

I reached down to pull the jacket away from her teeth. “That’s enough, girl,” I whispered.