Margaux never imagined her seventies would look like this: a small one-bedroom flat on the edge of town, a pension that shrank in spirit even when the numbers stayed the same, and a quiet that pressed in around her like fog.
Her husband, Matthieu, had been gone eight years. He’d left behind a few pieces of worn furniture, a closet that still smelled faintly like his cologne, and the kind of silence that doesn’t just fill a room—it rewrites it. They’d never had children. There were no nieces or nephews dropping by, no holiday chaos, no calls except the occasional one from her sister in Arizona, quick conversations on birthdays and Christmas that felt more like obligations than connection. Continue reading…
