Arthur read the last page of every book first. For forty-four years, it was just the way he lived. He would sit in his favorite wingback chair in our Burlington cottage, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, and before he even looked at the title page, he would flip to the very end. He’d read the last paragraph, close the book with a soft, satisfied thud, and then go back to the beginning.

It used to drive me crazy. Honestly, it felt like he was cheating on the author. “Why bother reading the journey if you’re just going to look at the destination, Arthur?” I would ask, usually while I was dusting the shelves or bringing him his afternoon tea.

He’d just look up, that gentle, secret smile playing on his lips, and say he liked knowing things turned out all right before he got attached. I guess I took that for granted. I thought it was just one of those endearing, harmless eccentricities that you stop questioning after four decades of marriage.

Then October came, and the world just stopped. Arthur passed away in that same wingback chair, quiet and sudden. He was halfway through a worn paperback mystery he’d picked up from the local thrift store. When the paramedics took him, I couldn’t bring myself to move his things. I couldn’t touch the book sitting on the brass lamp table. It stayed there through the first frost, then through the deep, heavy snows of January, a little bookmark of his absence.

Last night, the air in the cottage finally felt like it was shifting. The snow was melting, dripping off the eaves and soaking into the mud outside.

I decided it was time. I walked over to the lamp table, my hand shaking just a little, and picked up the book. As I lifted it, the spine, which had been broken in so many places over the years, gave way. The pages parted naturally at the back, right where Arthur had held it for the last time.

My thumb brushed against the white margin of the final page. I saw graphite markings. Not the printed text, but his handwriting. It was shaky, more slanted than I remembered, but it was unmistakably his. I leaned into the light of the lamp, my heart hammering against my ribs.

“If you’re reading the ending first, then you finally understand,” he had written.

I blinked, confused. I thought maybe it was some sort of joke. Arthur always did love a good, dry bit of wit. But as I read the next few lines, the playfulness evaporated.

He didn’t mention the butler or the plot twist of the mystery. He wrote about dates. He wrote about a consultation at Burlington General Hospital. He wrote about things that made no sense to me in the context of a story.

I set the book down on the table so hard it rattled the lamp. I didn’t know what to think, but my skin felt cold, a deep, radiating chill that had nothing to do with the drafty windows. I walked over to his mahogany desk in the corner. He’d kept a small dictionary there for years, and inside the front cover, he kept a tiny, brass key. I knew exactly where that key belonged.

I went to the bottom drawer. It was locked, as it had been for as long as I could remember. I slid the key into the slot, turned it, and felt a sick, hollow ache in my stomach as the drawer clicked open.

There was nothing but a single, thick manila folder. It had my name written on the front in his neat, librarian script.

I opened it. I don’t even remember the exact words on the first page, just the header: Neurological Consultation. I read the date. It was three years ago. I kept reading, skipping over the technical jargon, looking for the plain truth. There it was, in the conclusion of the report. Early-stage frontotemporal dementia.

The room seemed to tilt. I leaned against the desk, my breathing coming in short, ragged gasps. Three years. He had known for three years, and he hadn’t said a word. I thought about the times he’d stopped mid-sentence in the garden, or the way he’d stare at the coffee pot like he couldn’t quite remember how to make it work. I’d teased him about “getting forgetful in his old age.” I’d laughed it off. He had just smiled and kept reading.

I looked back at the book on the table. I picked it up again, my fingers trembling so badly I almost dropped it. I looked at the marginalia again, the note I hadn’t finished.

“I didn’t read endings to ruin books, Martha,” he had written. “I read them because my mind was starting to lose the middle. I needed to know our story ended happily before I forgot how to love you in real time. I hid it so you would remember me strong.”

The silence in the cottage was absolute. I felt like I was suffocating. I thought about all those years I’d teased him about his reading habit. I thought about every time he’d looked at me, his eyes full of that secret, quiet love, while he was rehearsing how to let go of the world before it slipped away from him. He hadn’t been reading for the plot. He had been practicing for the goodbye.

I sat there on the floor by his desk for a long time. I don’t know how long. An hour. Maybe two. I didn’t want to call anyone. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to hold the book, to touch the pencil marks he’d made, as if they could tell me something more. But there was nothing left to say.

Eventually, I dialed Dr. Thorne. He’d been our family friend for years, and when he answered, his voice was tired but kind. I didn’t have to explain much. He knew. He told me that Arthur had come to him the day he got the diagnosis. He said Arthur had been terrified, not of dying, but of being a burden, of me having to watch him fade. He had made Julian promise to keep it quiet. He wanted to give me a few more years of him being Arthur, not a patient.

“He loved you more than any man I’ve ever known, Martha,” Julian said. His voice cracked, just a little. “He said he’d rather you be a little annoyed by his habits than heartbroken by his reality.”

I hung up the phone. I felt a strange, heavy sense of peace washing over me, the kind that only comes after the storm has finished tearing everything down. I walked to the small woodstove we used in the winters. I opened the manila folder. I didn’t read the medical notes again. I didn’t need to. I watched the edges curl in the heat, the clinical, cold words turning to ash. It was what he wanted. He wanted to be remembered strong.

I stood there until the embers died down, watching the smoke drift up the chimney. Then I went back to the living room. I picked up the paperback again. I didn’t put it on the shelf with the others. I didn’t hide it away in a box. I walked over to the wingback chair.

I sat down in the spot where he had spent so many afternoons. The sunlight was pouring through the window now, hitting the wooden floorboards, turning the dust into gold. I opened a new book, a simple collection of poetry we used to read to each other on rainy Sundays.

I turned it over in my hands. I hesitated for a second, my thumb resting on the back cover. Then, very slowly, I flipped to the very last page. I traced the final sentence with my thumb, feeling the indentation of the print against my skin. I didn’t read it for the story. I read it because I finally understood the journey. I sat there in the warmth of the late afternoon, watching the shadows lengthen across the room, feeling him everywhere in the quiet, and for the first time in months, I just breathed. I sat there for a long time, the book open on my lap, waiting for the sun to set, and I knew that whatever came next, I would be okay. I was holding the ending, but I was still here, and that was enough.