She always says it with a small, dismissive smile — “I sleep alone, and I like it that way.” Her voice has the steady assurance of someone who’s convinced herself of it. But the bed tells a different story. Even in the faint morning light, the indentation is there — a subtle hollow beside her, deeper than her own slight frame could make. The sheets aren’t wrinkled by restless tossing. They’re shaped, curved, as if molded by the weight and warmth of someone who used to fit there perfectly.
She lies close to that space, not in the center like most who truly sleep alone. Her arm sometimes drapes into it, her knee edging toward where another leg should be. The way the blanket folds there is telling — gathered as if once pulled by another hand in the middle of the night. And if you watch her when she drifts toward sleep, you’ll see her shift slowly into that curve, pressing her back to it, her body finding the ghost of a shape it still remembers.
She will swear she doesn’t notice it. She’ll say she likes the extra room. But when the wind picks up and the shadows lengthen, her breathing deepens against that space, her fingers curling into the fabric like she’s holding something that isn’t there. Alone, she says. And yet the bed — the quiet, unflinching witness — knows exactly how she sleeps.