“I love you until the end of time, and whatever comes after that.” It was a bit of doggerel he’d coined on their wedding night, such a dramatic proclamation that Margaret had laughed in his face. It had since become shorthand between them, part of the internal language of marriage, a phrase both ironic and sincere, something uttered with a roll of the eyes and a thump of the heart. “And whatever comes after that,” she agreed, and laid her head on his chest.
