He wasn't coming.
She had waited, believing he would. Believing he might. Believing he'd been delayed. Believing, finally… that he'd turned his back on her, and he wasn't coming to find her, after all.
And she was proud of him. It nearly killed her - it might yet literally kill her, if she wasn't careful - but she was proud, so proud of the man he'd become, that he had made a choice to stay and take care of the rest of their family. He had put their needs in front of his own, certainly in front of hers, and chosen the good of the many, and she knew that was for the best. So why did it feel like she couldn't breathe most of the time?
It hadn't been a good life at the prison, but it hadn't been bad, and there had been times when, if she didn't look too closely at the details, she almost thought she might have been happy. Thinking about those times was what got her through the thin dark hours of the night when she lay awake and waited for morning.
The hardest part was that she cared, probably would for the rest of her life, what happened to them all. She wished for a magic mirror so she could watch them from a distance, see them going about their lives, healing and growing and falling in love and getting over whatever they felt from her absence.
There had never seemed to be enough time, the right time, to say what should have been said months ago - I need you, I love you, I never want to be apart from you again. Too much time spent fixing things and righting things and worrying about things and always thinking we'll get around to it, I'll take what I have and be patient, this is good, this is okay, I can live with it. Such a liar. Such a fool.
Every day she felt herself become a little more insubstantial, fading away, like without someone to look at her she would just disappear. She ate, and drank, and washed her face when she could, and caught glimpses of herself in reflective surfaces; that should have been enough to convince her that she still existed, but she was beginning to feel like she could lift her arms and the wind would carry her away. And he wouldn't be there to catch her when she fell. She had thought he would always be there to catch her.
Where are you now? What are you doing? Do you think of me? Do you grieve for me? Did I ever bring you the kind of joy I felt with you?
No one tells you that it's almost over and you should treasure the moments you have left. There are no warning signs, caution, sharp turn ahead, just an abrupt stop, and you're alone. It should probably have been terrifying, but somehow the feeling escaped her.
She told herself it was self-indulgent, but on the morning of the sixth day she simply got in the car and drove east, into the rising sun, thinking, I'll just take one last look, say goodbye, and then I'll go find out what's left of me. For maybe a heartbeat when she stopped at the point that overlooked the prison she thought, what are all those people doing out in the yard? And then she saw the ruin her home had become, and the figures milling around it turned into an army of the endless dead.