Apparently, time and my happiness hadn’t softened his heart because he left his entire, very considerable estate to his youngest son, who was untroubled by twinges of conscience. Daniel was devastated. “This is what loving me cost you, Margaret!” he said bitterly. “The life you deserved!” “No!” I told him firmly. “I wouldn’t trade what we have for all the money in the world!” But Daniel grew silent and distant, and for the first time in thirty-eight years of marriage, I started wondering if he still loved me.Then Daniel started taking on overtime at work, a lot of overtime. “It’s this new overnight delivery mail, it has to be sorted 24/7,” he explained. But I noticed that when Daniel came home at two or three in the morning, he smelled different. He smelled of lilies, and I had never liked lily-scented soap. It reminded me of my paternal grandmother, a woman I had never liked. Also, he didn’t make love to me anymore unless it was the weekend. At first, I told myself it was my imagination, but things didn’t change. Two years later, Daniel still came home every night, still smelled of lilies, and worse of all, there was no extra money in our joint account. I tried to broach the subject with Daniel once, but he snapped at me. “Do I have to account for what I spend, too? It’s my money, I earned it!” After that, I didn’t say another word and wept in silence when he came home every night and turned his back on me in the same bed where we had conceived our children.We never talked about our plans for our retirement anymore, and Daniel’s ‘overtime’ left us few opportunities to work through what was destroying our marriage. When the weekends came around, he locked himself in the garage fiddling with god-knew-what and only came out for meals. From considering myself the happiest woman in the world, I was sure I was the most miserable. All my dreams had evaporated into thin air, and I even started doubting if Daniel had ever loved me. We had just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary when Daniel had a heart attack. I knew what the prognosis was even before the doctor spoke. “Mrs. Hernandez,” he told me, “I think you should prepare yourself for the worst. Your husband’s heart is just plain worn out. The only option would be a heart transplant, and his age places him low on the list…””He’s sixty-nine,” I gasped. “He’s only sixty-nine, he promised he was going to retire…” That night, I called our children, and they flew to New York to say their goodbyes, along with Anna, my only grandchild. Two weeks later, it was all over. Daniel was gone, and even though he had spoken lovingly to our children and grandchild about the past, he had only held my hand in silence. “Margaret,” he’d whispered on his last day on earth. “I love you, only