My son won the lottery, kicked me out of the house, and said: “You’re worthless! Go live in a nursing home.” I wandered aimlessly to clear my mind. When I sat down on a bench, a homeless man walked up to me, smiled, and said: “You look just like my late wife…”

The volunteer at the front desk, a tired-l looking woman in her 50s, had taken pity on us when Blaine explained that we were a married couple who’d just found each other after years of separation.

“We have one bed available in the women’s section and one in the men’s,” she’d said apologetically. “Spouses can’t room together, but you can spend time in the common area until 9:00 p.m.”

So, here we sat side by side on a worn couch that had seen better decades, sharing a cup of watery coffee and trying to piece together 15 years of stolen time.

The common room buzzed with quiet conversations. The soft murmur of people who’d learned to keep their voices down in shared spaces.Track Pregnancy

“Tell me about Richard growing up,” Blaine said quietly, his hands wrapped around the warm cup like it was a lifeline. “After I supposedly died, what was he like?”