He was never afraid of time.
He liked to think that every wrinkle had a story, every grey hair a memory of something lived well. Age had never unsettled him. He wore it the way a man wears a coat that has finally softened to the shape of his shoulders.
But that morning, leaning over the sink with shaving foam on his face, he paused.
A few white hairs caught the bathroom light. Fine lines he had not noticed before stretched across his forehead. He smiled at first. Wisdom, he thought. That is what this means.
Then another thought arrived, quieter and less welcome.
Has it really been fifteen years?
Fifteen years since they stood under the summer sun, surrounded by people who kept saying how perfect they looked together. He remembered her laughter then, light and unstoppable. He remembered her singing in the kitchen, barefoot, the radio too loud, not caring who heard.
Life had changed its rhythm since then. The house grew fuller and her hands grew busier. Children, meals, school runs, birthdays, the endless administration of a family in motion. Everything found its place. Everything except them.
He had tried, more than once, to reach her for a moment. A small conversation, a walk, a look that was not about something that needed fixing. Her answers came quickly and with reason.
Who will make dinner. The children have school tomorrow. You know I am tired.
He never argued. He simply nodded and let her keep moving, room to room, task to task, day to day, until love itself became another thing on the list of things to maintain.
He rinsed his face and looked at the mirror again.
The man looking back was not disappointed. He was thoughtful, in the way of someone trying to understand something before it is too late to act on the understanding.
He thought of trees in autumn, their leaves turning brown. Not always because of the season. Sometimes because they had not been watered enough, and the season only revealed what had been happening quietly all along.
He and she had spent fifteen years taking care of everything except the reason they had started. That was not a failure of love. It was a failure of attention, and attention, unlike time, could still be given.
He wiped the mirror clean.
He decided that morning not to wait for another season, not to let the autumn deepen into winter while he stood at the sink thinking about it. He would water what remained. Slowly, without announcement, without asking her to notice.
Because some things, if you catch them early enough, can still turn green again.