Paro's Silence

The door did not open because I chose not to open it. Let the poets say otherwise. Let them say I didn't know he was there, that I was sleeping, that fate kept us apart. I knew. I heard the carriage. I heard his cough — that terrible, wet cough that told me everything. I stood on the other side of that door with my hand on the latch, and I made the hardest decision of my life. Not because I didn't love him. Because I did. And I knew that if I opened that door, I would follow him into the dark, and my children would wake up motherless. He chose destruction. I chose them. That is not silence. That is the loudest thing I ever said.