As soon as he saw the stetson on the bed he knew that she was gone. This wasn't just another one of her fleeting tantrums. This time, he knew, she was gone for good. He gazed half-heartedly out the window to the courtyard below. It was no use going on, they had said.

Perhaps he expected too much of her? It had only been a few years since she had returned from the war. Her dreams still haunted her sleep most every night. And no matter what she told him, he knew that being by his side was a constant reminder of what she had lost. Who she had lost. He turned and looked down at the violin. Why had she left it? The hat he could understand, but the violin? It was the only thing that had preserved her through the rare evenings of quiet in the hospital. Rare evenings between the waves of chaos, inundated by the injured and the dying.

Perhaps that was it. Perhaps she left the violin for the same reason that she had left the hat. She wanted a fresh start, free of memories good or bad from those days. A fresh start he knew he could never share with her. Not after the things he'd seen. What he'd become.

He stepped over to the bed and dropping his own hat beside the stetson, he picked up the large worn hat. How out-sized it looked to him. And how, well, ancient it now seemed. As if out of another time. He raised it to his head and then stopped mid way. No. That's over now. Gently, he placed the hat back where it had been and picked up his own again. It felt small to him, but right in his hand, some how. Hmm, he said aloud, and in doing so, he seemed to wake from his stupor. An entirely different expression overtook his face. He looked now... uncomfortable. Out of place. He stepped quickly toward the door, and opening it sharply, he left the room. The door shut behind him.