An uninvited ray of sunlight found its way through a gap between two slats of the partially shut white Venetian blinds and reached Ben McCoy’s closed eyes yet another morning.

The image of a vermilion shade rendered by his burning eyelids summoned him – to the sound of a singing spotted towhee that rejoiced somewhere outside – to welcome the new day that had arrived.

Feeling slightly disoriented, Ben stood on his left elbow while raising the palm of his right hand in an useless effort to defend his eyes from the assault that was inflicted by the profuse brightness that seemed to reverberate in the bedroom’s white walls, which momentarily made it very difficult for him to see anything at all.

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Amid the blurry images that were taking form in front of his struggling eyes, Ben could discern the shapely figure of a woman that was sleeping in the semi-fetal position by his left side, covered to her navel by a white top flat bed sheet, with both arms wrapped around the white pillow beneath her head.

Overwhelmed with happiness and relief, Ben did not notice that his lips produced an open smile at the moment that his eyes discerned the face of his wife, whose body was turned in his direction.

With his right hand, Ben stroked carefully the beautiful woman’s straight, golden blond hair while contemplating the few freckles that almost imperceptibly dotted the skin beneath and between her eyes, and leaned down to kiss her heart-shaped lips.

As Ben closed his eyes, less than an inch apart from the woman’s face, he felt the weight of a hand grasping his right shoulder with cautious firmness.