But he never complained much.
He would come through the back door just after sunrise, set his lunch cooler on the counter, kiss my cheek, and say, “One day, Loretta, you’re going to wake up and hear waves instead of traffic.”
I used to laugh at him.
“We can barely keep the truck running,” I’d say.
He would wink, pull his cap low, and answer, “That’s why God invented overtime.”
That condo was his overtime.
It was Christmas shifts. It was packed lunches instead of diner plates. It was repair jobs he did himself, hands stiff from work, because paying a handyman meant delaying the dream another month. It was the envelope of cash he kept inside the old coffee can on the top shelf of our pantry. It was every little sacrifice he made without announcing it.
He died before he got many mornings there.
A bad heart, the doctor said. Too much work, too much stress, too many years of saying he was fine because men from Ray’s generation believed pain was only worth mentioning when something had already broken.
After the funeral, people kept telling me to sell the condo.
“It’s too much for one person.”
“Insurance on the coast is no joke.”
“You could use the money.”
They meant well. Most people do, at first. But every time I tried to imagine putting a sign in the window, I saw Ray standing on that balcony in his old Alabama cap, hands on the rail, smiling at the water like he had finally outrun time.
So I kept it.
I kept the clean towels folded in the hallway closet. I kept coffee filters beside the sink. I kept a little jar of quarters for the laundry room, even after the machines started taking cards. I kept his old cap on the peg by the door, faded from sun and sweat, the brim curled just the way his fingers had shaped it.
