Elliot once told me: ever since he and Lucian fell in love, they’d lived together in a house that belonged only to them. In the vast, lonely ocean so called the world, that house had been their shelter, their fortress. While Lucian was alive, the rooms were full of light — the kind that traced the walls and found its way back to him, like a tide that made everything feel safe. But after Lucian passed away, the house lost its anchor. It drifted, aimless, along a shore that no longer held direction. And Elliot remained inside it, counting memories as one might count the pieces of furniture left behind, floating on an ocean now named after Lucian.

No wind…
No waves…
Not a single star overhead…

Only the sound of one man's heartbeat — like a paddle against still water — cutting through the endless night.

He told me most of their stories, eventually. Not all at once, but honestly — disarmingly so.

It was the kind of happiness you’d think of as ordinary, almost boring. They were childhood friends, later college sweethearts, and eventually colleagues — then partners. When Elliot interrogated the living in the homicide unit, Lucian spoke for the dead in the forensics lab. He once showed me a photo — old, tucked deep inside his wallet, already yellowing at the edges. It was taken the day they graduated. In it, Elliot looked young, right on the cusp of adulthood, his face still untouched by weariness. He was laughing, arm flung around someone just out of frame. There was a reckless brightness to his smile, the kind that seemed to say: As long as I have this person beside me, the world can’t touch me.

I felt a strange ache when I saw that photo. It had nothing to do with me — and everything to do with being human. Anyone would feel it. Faced with the contrast between that radiant youth and the worn, exhausted man before me, one couldn't help but feel something like pity. And besides — Elliot Lin is, legally, my husband now. Even from a technical standpoint, I suppose I should care for him a little.

He didn’t seem to notice my momentary silence. Or maybe he did, but didn’t pry. Instead, he tapped the folded edge of the photo with his finger.

“That’s Lucian,” he said.

But Lucian’s face wasn’t in the picture. It had been folded deliberately, his side hidden from view. From where I sat, I couldn’t see him at all.

I didn’t ask. I figured that face — that memory — was one of the things Elliot had chosen to keep sealed away, untouched by anyone else.