He thinks I can’t hear him, or that I’ll think he’s singing, but I know. He thinks the spattering of water on ceramic tile, the whooshing of the exhaust fan will hide his sin, but I hear him in there, intent and hushed. I’d call it pillow talk, if there were pillows in the shower, but the closest we’ve got is that old, mildew-smelling loofah-on-a-stick.

He called her name in bed once, but I shut that down. If a woman can die twice, I told him, she will, and she’ll have company—thumb-testing the bread knife, staring at the thin, frog-gulping skin of his neck.

He’ll say what he’s said before, about promise cut short, a seed barely given a chance to sprout, how at this point, it’s his own youth he mourns, more than Olivia—the dead wife, I mean—more than Olivia qua Olivia.

Shut up, old man, I’ll tell him, and find something better to do with your tongue—but he’ll never stop whispering to her, never stop missing the lovely thing that never had a chance to grow stale, and can I blame him? We all want something we can’t have. I want my mother’s perfect butter chicken recipe, but by the time I was old enough to care about old family recipes, she’d lost her words.

But I do blame him. I blame him for hiding her picture behind an ancient Blockbuster card in his wallet. For closing his eyes when that stupid song about the Milky Way comes on the radio. For being so damned clean. He’s naked and she’s dead and he has more to say to her in that shower than he ever does to me, sitting across from him at the kitchen table. When he speaks to her he’s a boy throwing pebbles at a window, risking shotgun daddies and police-calling neighbors for a chance at reckless, stupid love. When his voice gets that low throb, like he’s speaking a language only they know. When he laughs, deep in his chest.

My husband talks to his dead wife in the shower. And the worst part is, sometimes I think I hear another voice, teasing, sweetly promising. Sometimes I swear I hear her talking back.