Every Night at 8:13

Raindrops were whispering again. Not loud, not urgent. Just enough to fill the silence between the tick of the clock and the faint humming of the old music box. I had wound it up again, like I did every night. Like I promised her.

8:13 PM.

That’s when she left.

Not the dramatic kind of leaving—no slammed door, no packed bags, no raised voices. Just silence. A hospital monitor. A long, flat line. One final breath I almost didn’t notice. The kind of stillness that feels like time itself pausing out of respect.

It was a Tuesday.

She hated Tuesdays. Said it always felt like the week had just enough energy left to disappoint you again.

Funny how the little things stay.

She loved that song—the one the music box still plays, though it limps now, wheezing through notes like an old man with emphysema. I found it at a flea market in Montauk. We were supposed to be looking for antique silverware for her mother. We left with a chipped porcelain ballerina that sang Chopin and a seashell lamp we never plugged in.

"I love it," she said when I handed her the box.

“You haven’t even wound it up.”

“I love you,” she said.

And I suppose that was the difference between us. I looked at broken things and saw problems. She saw stories. Potential. Magic waiting to be rediscovered.

“If I ever leave before you, play this. Every night. Promise?”

I laughed.

People in love say all kinds of stupid things.

But I promised.

Now the box plays to a room with only one toothbrush. Her scarf still hangs by the door. Her favorite mug—cracked near the handle—is where she left it, on the shelf, collecting dust instead of coffee. I haven’t moved anything. As if not touching them will preserve their truth. As if she'll walk back in and need them right where she left them.

I live with her ghost, but she’s not haunting me.

She’s waiting.

Waiting for me to keep my promise.

Sometimes I imagine she’s watching from the doorway, arms crossed, teasing me for letting the curtains get dirty. Sometimes I speak aloud without realizing it. I narrate my evenings like a bad one-man show:

“Did you know the grocery store sells your favorite cookies again? The lemon ones with the sugar crystals.”

No answer.

“I didn’t buy them. Didn’t seem right.”

The wind outside rattles the shutters in reply. That’s how it usually goes.

My friends say I should let go. That grief isn't a home to live in, just a place to visit sometimes. But they didn’t know her laugh. They didn’t see the way her eyes squinted when she really meant something. They didn’t know how she said "I love you" without ever moving her mouth. Just a glance. A squeeze of the hand. A silence filled with meaning.

They didn’t see her sitting on the balcony in the rain, letting her hair get soaked just to feel alive.

I remember the night we met. She wore yellow. A reckless, bold yellow dress that dared you to ignore her. I was reading a book about Nietzsche and drinking burnt coffee. She sat across from me, ordered a caramel macchiato, and said, “You know, he died insane.”

“Nietzsche?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Too much thinking. Not enough feeling.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You believe that?”

“I know that.”

She left her number on a napkin. I still have it. The ink is smudged now, but I can still trace each curve of her handwriting.

We didn’t fall in love right away. Not in the fairy tale sense. It was gradual. Like water boiling—silent, then sudden. I started noticing things. How she always hummed when nervous. How she never finished her tea. How she’d tap her fingers to invisible music.

We built a life on fragments. Grocery lists. Inside jokes. Late-night dancing in the kitchen to jazz. Arguments over movie endings. Apologies with flowers. Not big gestures, but daily ones.

Ordinary love.

But nothing about losing her felt ordinary.

Her decline was quiet. She didn’t want to make a fuss. She didn’t tell many people. “I don’t want to be a story yet,” she joked.

Even at the end, she made space for my grief. She planned ahead, left notes in places I would find at just the right moment. In her favorite book: “Don’t reread it. Live it.” In the sock drawer: “Stop stealing mine.” On a photo of us: “Smile like this again someday.”

The music box had no note. It was the note.

Tonight, like every night, I sit by the window. I light the same candle. I hum along. I pretend she’s just in the other room, brushing her hair. I imagine her calling me, asking where I kept the damn sugar.

And at exactly 8:13, I press play.

Even though the music box skips a note now, I still hear the whole song.

Because it’s not the sound I listen to—

It’s her.

Every missed beat is a memory. Every wobble in the tune is her laughing, or crying, or both at once. Every note is the sound of a love that refused to die with her body.

Last week, the neighbor’s daughter came by. She’s seven. Her name is Ellie. Curious, always asking questions like little detectives who’ve solved half the mystery already.

“Why do you play the music box every night?” she asked.

I hesitated.

“Because someone I loved asked me to.”

She looked puzzled, then smiled. “That’s nice. Can I listen too?”

So I let her.

She danced to the crooked tune, arms in the air, spinning, laughing like the world was brand new. For a moment, I saw her again—in the yellow dress, twirling in the café, daring life to look away.

Ellie comes by more often now. Sometimes she draws pictures of “the music lady” and leaves them at my door. One had a caption: “She lives in the song.”

Maybe she does.

Maybe love like that never leaves. Maybe it just shifts shape. From person to echo. From presence to memory. From heartbeat to humming.

I still grieve. But it no longer drowns me.

Now, grief walks beside me. And sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can feel her hand in mine, still warm, still real.

And every night at 8:13, we meet again.

Not in flesh.

But in music.

In memory.

In a promise kept.