Forty-three years of folding Arthur’s shirts and listening to him complain about the draft coming through the pantry window is a long time to build up habits. When my breathing finally stopped at 8:42 on a Tuesday morning with a half-finished crossword puzzle resting on my chest, I honestly thought that would be the end of the noise. I figured I would get a nice quiet stretch of nothing.

Instead, I woke up standing on dry grass that smelled faintly of sweet clover and crushed mint, looking at an orchard that went on forever under a pale blue sky that looked like the afternoon we drove down to Traverse City in nineteen-eighty-four.

My knees didn’t ache. That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing I noticed was Arthur standing by a split-rail fence in his old flannel shirt with the frayed cuffs, looking like he had been waiting around for someone to show up with a wrench.

The moment I saw him, my chest did that familiar little flip it used to do back when we were first courting down by the river. I didn’t even think about it. I just dropped my purse right there in the clover and ran across the grass toward him with my arms open wide. “Honey! We’re finally together again!”

I was ready to fall right into his shoulder the way I had a thousand times when he came in from the north forty with grease on his fingers and bad news about the tractor. But right before I reached him, he took a quick step backward and held his hands up like he was flagging down a delivery truck on a narrow road. “Whoa! Hold on!”

I stopped dead in my tracks, my arms still half-raised, and blinked at him through the bright sunlight. The wind was blowing his gray hair across his forehead just the way it used to when he was being stubborn about fixing the roof before the snow hit. “Why?” I asked, and my voice sounded clearer than it had in ten years.

He smiled that little half-smile he always used when he was about to explain why my canning jars were organized wrong in the cellar. He shifted his weight from one boot to the other and looked down at the fence rail. “Remember our wedding vows?”

“Of course I do, Arthur. We said them in front of the whole Methodist congregation back when gasoline was eighty cents a gallon.”

“We promised to stay together until death,” he said, and he actually tapped his index finger against the weathered cedar rail to emphasize the point.

I nodded because I wasn’t about to argue grammar with a man who had spent four decades arguing with the county tax assessor. “Exactly.”

He smiled wider then, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “Well… death finally did its job.”

I stood there for a second with the clover tickling my ankles, trying to figure out if he had hit his head on a cloud or if the afterlife had made him even more difficult than he was in life. “What do you mean?”

“Our marriage contract has expired,” he said, tipping his chin up toward the high blue sky.

I stared at him for a long, quiet moment while the wind rustled the apple blossoms above our heads.

A bumblebee drifted past my ear, buzzing low and lazy. I didn’t yell. I didn’t throw my hands up. After forty-three years of listening to Arthur explain why we needed a new belt for the combine every autumn, I knew better than to match his stubbornness right out of the gate.

Then I smiled. “Okay, honey.”

He let out a long breath and dropped his hands to his sides, looking visibly relieved that he had gotten through his little speech without a shouting match. “Good. I’m glad you’re reasonable about it. Everyone needs a little space after forty-three years, Clara. Even up here.”

I let him stand there enjoying his little victory for three whole seconds before I added the rest of it. “But I already talked to Him.”

Arthur froze mid-breath, his fingers hovering right above his belt buckle where he liked to hook his thumbs. His eyebrows pulled down together over his nose. “What did He say?”

I smoothed down the front of my dress, which felt wonderfully light and soft, and looked him straight in the eye. “He said Heaven has no divorce.”

The color didn’t drain from his face because we were past all that now, but his jaw went slack in a way I hadn’t seen since the time I backed his favorite trailer into the ditch behind the barn. He stood there blinking at me, his mouth opening and closing twice before any sound actually came out of it. For once in his eternal existence, Arthur didn’t have a ready comeback.

“Oh no,” he whispered, staring at me like I had just told him the tractor engine was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor.

I nodded toward the little white-roofed cottage sitting just past the edge of the orchard with smoke curling lazily out of the stone chimney. “It does have guest rooms, though,” I said, and started walking past him down the path without looking back to see if he was following.