The old man kept asking me for two towels

Dear Delyara, I work nights at a hotel reception desk. An elderly man checked in alone tonight and asked for two towels, two toothbrushes, and breakfast for two. I thought his wife was arriving later. Around midnight, he came downstairs because he could not sleep. He told me his wife had entered hospice that morning. Their apartment was across the street from the hospital, but he could not bear going home because every room contained her things. So he booked one night with us. He said, “I keep forgetting she isn’t coming.” That explained the towels. I asked whether he wanted me to change breakfast to one. He shook his head. “Leave it.” We sat in the lobby for twenty minutes while I pretended paperwork was not waiting. He told me they had been married fifty-three years and that she always used too many towels in hotels. At two, he went upstairs. I sent two extra towels to his room without telling him. I am twenty-five. I have never been married. My boyfriend and I argue about whose turn it is to buy toilet paper. Tonight, I keep thinking about a man in room 407 sleeping beside an untouched pillow because his marriage has reached a place where even ordering the correct number of towels feels like betrayal.