It wasn’t grief that brought me there — it was exhaustion. After forty years of shared routines and quiet companionship, the city apartment felt crowded with memories. So I sold it, used part of his inheritance, and moved on.

I bought a small white house by the sea, the kind we once mentioned in passing. It wasn’t a grand dream, just something simple and peaceful. A place that felt lighter.

“We’ll retire somewhere quiet,” Javier used to say. “Where the mornings smell like salt.” It had always sounded distant, almost imaginary.In the end, I went there alone — not to escape him, but to finally breathe.