He went back on a Tuesday in March, six years ago. She had been dead for nine years by then.
The moment he chose was 7:14 on a Saturday in April. She was at the door, coat already on, bag on her shoulder, leaving for the airport. He had been looking for his keys. She said something. He had been looking away when she said it.
He had spent nine years with different versions of what she might have said. Something composed, specific to him. She had been perceptive in a quiet, persistent way, and if she had known it was the last time, he had always thought she would have found the word that fit. The versions accumulated the way versions do. Each one had a different weight.
When he came back from the visit he sat in the consultation room for a long time before he could speak.
"She said 'be warm, '" he told the counselor. "It's what she said whenever I was going somewhere cold, or working late, or she thought I was carrying something I wasn't saying. Just that. Be warm."
The counselor said something careful and probably right. He did not fully hear it. He was still at the door, her coat on, the ordinary phrase leaving her mouth.
That was six years ago.
He still had the kettle she bought. Green, slow-pour spout, chosen because she had read something about extraction rates. He made tea most mornings in it, unhurriedly, in the way the morning allowed.
He had expected something to settle after the visit. Not dramatically. He had understood enough about the process to know it did not work that way. But some specific grief put to rest.
What he had instead was "be warm." The actual phrase. No longer requiring imagination.
Be warm, she had said.
He pours his tea.