“I’m saving it,” Coles replied.

Use slowly.

Eleanor found him at 6 p.m., still staring.

But saving wasn’t his way. He was an accountant of loss. He knew that sugar cubes, left in the open, absorb moisture from the air. They soften. They crumble. They become a gritty heap of what they once were.

The next Tuesday, Eleanor placed another cube beside the first. Coles lined them up. Then another Tuesday, and another. Soon, a tiny white city grew on his desk. He refused to explain. He refused to let her touch them.

The ritual began after his diagnosis. Eleanor had read somewhere that sweetness could anchor memory. Each cube, she said, was a day he still had. But Coles, ever the pragmatist, saw them differently. To him, each cube was a day already dissolved—gone into the dark brew of the past.