As for Poppy, she returned to an empty house. For three months she had endured this painful, solo homecoming. Three months and it did not get any easier. She went through the motions of removing her hat, lighting the lamps. Things must be done, life must go on. Life would go on, even if every breath she took hurt, even if her joints ached when she moved. Sorrow and loneliness were an insidious evil, for they lived in the mind. One could not take a tonic and see them dissipate.

Minutes passed as she stood in the center of her abandoned home. She would not hear his footstep on the landing or smell the fragrance of his pipe when the sun set and the teakettle whistled. And she would not feel the warmth of his arms holding her when the rest of the world assumed she was too strong to need comfort. She was strong. Only, she was no longer whole.