Christian scoops up a handful of rich brown soil, steps to the edge of the grave, and lets the dirt trickle over the edge of his palm. The soil makes an echoing, thudding sound on the small casket of polished mahogany.

Ava stands a few feet behind him, a wad of Kleenex clutched in one fist, which is trembling and pressed against her lips. Tears trickle down her cheeks. Ava’s older sister Delta and her son Alex stand with Ava’s parents, nearby. Christian’s mother, his only living family, stands close to Ava’s family. A few friends and some of Ava’s extended family are also in attendance. The minister has said his words, and waits nearby, looking appropriately somber, his hands folded over his well-worn leather Bible.

Christian glances back at Ava, stretches out his hand for her. She refuses with a soft shake of her head.

“Come on, Ava. One last goodbye.”

“I can’t.” Her voice is a whisper, lost in a hot Florida breeze. “I can’t. I already said goodbye to him. I can’t do it again.”

Ava turns and walks away, the thin black spikes of her heels sinking into the thick green turf. Her back is straight, and a pair of oversized black Brighton sunglasses cover her face, hiding her tears. Except those that drip from her chin, that is. She reaches their car, a glossy white Range Rover, climbs into the passenger seat, and waits with the door open to allow the heat built up inside the vehicle to vent out.

Christian spends another moment at the grave, staring down at the tiny wooden box. “Goodbye, Henry. I love you.” His voice breaks on the final whispered word, and then he strides slowly across the grass, his once-broad shoulders now thin and stooped, as if he is bent to breaking under some invisible, enormous weight.

Ava watches him. He’s as handsome as ever, only…now he’s thin and haggard. Once, he was powerfully built and bursting with vitality, radiating charisma and charm, his chiseled features exuding life and joy and vibrant intelligence. His hair is greasy, unwashed, and shows strands of gray, where before there were only glossy, wavy, sandy-brown locks usually left artfully messy. His eyes, though. Those show his sorrow the most clearly. Blue-gray, the color of polished steel, or the sea in the distance on a cloudy day. They once shone brightly, warmly, they once welcomed you to approach him and invited you to sit down and talk to him, and for Ava, they once begged her to kiss him, to interrupt his writing, to come up with something quippy and sarcastic just to see those eyes of his blaze with humor. Now, they’re dead and flat. More steel than sea. Sorrowful rather than sanguine. Hard, rather than inviting. Sunken, dark circles, bags. Lines, deeply carved around them and between them. Anger lines and sorrow lines, rather than laugh lines.

Ava is as much changed as Christian, and she knows it.

Her heart is cracking, shattering, but for the first time in her life she can find no way of expressing any of it. She has no words. She was voted “most talkative” in high school, but now…what is there to say?

Christian climbs into the Rover, starts it with a push of the button. They pull away, and leave the cemetery. The radio is off. Her hands are folded on her lap, fingers twisting and tangling and tightening and releasing compulsively. Christian drives with his right hand at twelve o’clock on the steering wheel, the fingers of his left hand propped at his temple, pressing hard.

It’s a thirty-minute drive from the cemetery to their condo on the beach north of Ft. Lauderdale; those thirty minutes pass in complete silence.

And when they arrive home, Ava trudges listlessly to their bedroom, leaving one of her shoes in the den and the other in the hallway, discarding her purse at the foot of the bed. She climbs into bed, on the right side, under the covers, fully clothed, staring at a small framed photo on her bedside table.

In that photograph, Henry is in cradled in her arms, a bright, happy, innocent grin on his little face, lighting up his eyes, which are so much like his father’s. In that photograph, Ava is just as happy, the smile on her face so wide and so bright she is utterly transformed. She doesn’t recognize herself, in that photograph. It doesn’t match the woman she sees in the mirror.

Once through the door, Christian does three things in a specific order, with practiced familiarity: first, he sets his keys on the center of the island, along with his phone and wallet; second, he flips open a cabinet over the refrigerator and grabs a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label; third, he goes into his office, closes the door, and sits behind the desk with his scotch. He takes a long pull directly from the bottle, and stares at a photograph on the left side of the desk: it is a selfie, snapped early one morning on his phone. Ava is asleep on her side, Henry cradled carefully in her arms, nuzzled to her bare breast, his chubby little fingers curled against her pale skin. They both share the same peaceful half-smile, mother and child. The selfie features half of Christian’s face, the right side of the photograph slicing directly down the center of his face, and his smile is one of pride and happiness and joy at the sight of his sleepy little family.

His laptop, a thin silver MacBook Air, remains closed in the middle of his desk. On the top of it, just below the Apple logo, is a yellow Post-it Note, in his handwriting: last 20k words due 4/7.

The date is April 5, 2015, and he has never missed a deadline, not once in his life, academically or professionally.

Even if he opened his laptop, he knew there would be no words waiting to flow through his fingertips.

When his father died, Christian wrote. He channeled the rage and confusion and relief into a marathon eighteen-hour writing session, in which he produced twenty thousand words of the most poetic and powerful prose of his entire life.

When his beloved dog died, he wrote.

When he and Ava broke up their senior year of college, he wrote.

And he wrote even more when they got back together, and only stopped to spend forty-eight hours making up with her. He’d then made omelets and toast and had gone back to writing.

This time?

There was nothing.

Silence.

And that, in some ways, was the most terrifying thing of all.

For a writer, that mental silence which signifies a damming up of the creative flow is death by torture—excruciating, slow, and terrifying.

Christian takes another slug of the Johnny Walker, a long glugging drag on the bottle, and then slams it down with a growling hiss as the whisky burns down his throat.

He coughs, and then twists the cap back on.

A sudden, fierce need seizes him, and he gives it rein. He stands up suddenly, leaving the chair spinning as he moves around the desk, out of the office, and up the stairs. He pauses in the doorway of their room, staring at the slight bump under the duvet that is Ava. She must know he’s there, but gives no indication. The blanket doesn’t rise or fall visibly, and fear blasts through him, spurring him to lurch over to her side of the bed and crouch beside it, peering at her—she’s alive, she hasn’t suddenly and inexplicably died. She’s just…there. Barely. Her eyes are open, staring at the photograph. Tears trickle now and then down her cheek, into her eye, onto the pillow. She doesn’t wipe them away, doesn’t sniffle.

Christian stands up. Rips off his tie. Tosses the suit coat aside. Kicks his shoes away. Sheds his dress shirt and the undershirt with its faint sweat stains at the underarms. Steps out of his trousers and underwear. Slides into the bed behind Ava. He clings to her, pressing himself up against her.

She doesn’t move.

“Ava.” His voice is a murmur, a low, rough, ragged plea. “Look at me.”

She doesn’t respond. If he hadn’t seen her blink a tear away, if he couldn’t feel the warmth of her skin and the subtle expansion of her torso as he clings to her, he would think her dead.

“Ava. Please. Talk to me.” His palm clutches at her belly, his nose buries between her shoulder blades. He heaves a shuddering breath. “Please.”

Silence.

Christian remains behind her, clinging to her. Breathing her scent. Begging her—silently now—to respond, to turn to him, literally and metaphorically—for comfort.

But there is only silence.