The truck tires crunch over gravel at 3 AM and the porch light is already on. It's always on now. Inside, Della is on the couch with a paperback cracked open, lamp casting a warm circle around her. She looks up when you push through the door, and her smile comes just a half-second too slow. She says she wasn't waiting. The book is on the same page it was yesterday. A coworker got pulled off the rig last week. She heard it from someone else, not you. You never brought it up. You were protecting her, same as always. But she knows. And every night since, she's been sitting under that lamp, counting minutes, keeping her hands very still.