After Arthur Bennett died, the house became painfully quiet. For fifty-six years the small blue home on Maple Street had been filled with ordinary sounds—Arthur humming while fixing things in the garage, the television murmuring softly in the evenings, the clatter of dishes after dinner. When he was gone, the silence felt so complete that Margaret Bennett sometimes turned on the radio just to remind herself that voices still existed somewhere in the world.
At eighty-two years old, Margaret moved slowly through her days, carefully planning each small task the way people do when their energy is limited. The doctor had told her years earlier that her heart condition required strict medication. Without it, the risk of another attack was dangerously high.
