She touches the small rip in her petticoat. The frayed cotton threads brush against her and her cheeks are pricked by fresh, hot tears. She will never sew it up. She has always been meticulous about her clothes, no hole or broken seam has ever escaped her, but she will never sew this rip up.
Her fingers are cold. Her fingers have always been cold. What was it her mother used to say? Cold hands, warm heart. She holds her cold fingers to her face and breathes on them, and they thank her with a ghost. The ghost his touch, when he had kissed them.
He had asked that she come to him in her own clothes, not her uniform. As she had dressed, she felt a quiver in her stomach she remembered from her childhood, when she had tried on her mother's wedding dress. He had looked up at her like man in awe of his bride.
He had spoken to her of his dreams, his hopes, and he stroked her face. He had stroked her face as he told her of the change that was coming, as he told her to open her eyes. He knew he was dying and had said so, and looked at her with pity, as though he had foreseen the suffering that grips her heart now, the fresh tears on her cheek.
Once her task was completed and her pencil set aside, his hand had gently clasped hers and he asked a question, with no mockery in his eyes.
"If I were not sick, and only here for the boy, would you have said yes if I had asked to take you out somewhere?"
"I'm not aloud."
"It is against the rules?"
"Yes."
This had elicited a smile from him, a genuine smile.
"Then that is an injustice, and you must fight it. Promise me you will."
She had nodded, and he had smiled again.
"But if it were not against the rules, and I had asked you to dinner, would you have said yes?"
There had been silence as they watched each other, before she spoke.
"I would always have said yes."
At this, he had lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them tenderly, and she remembers that kiss now, and the knowledge that it had been, to her, her wedding night. And he was her husband. And she is his widow.
She touches the rip on her petticoat. She will never sew it up.