I watched him
bend down.
There was a faint red mark near his collar.
Lipstick.
Jenna wore that shade.
Rosewood.
I knew because I had given it to her.
For her bridal shower.
“There’s leftover chicken,” I said.
“Perfect.”
Mark removed the container.
Then he paused.
“You okay?”
There it was.
Thirty-one years of familiarity.
He sensed something.
I forced my shoulders to relax.
“Headache.”
He looked at me for another second.
Then nodded.
“Take something.”
“I will.”
He heated his dinner.
I stood across the kitchen watching him chew.
Watching him drink water.
Watching him scroll his phone.
At one point, he smiled at something on the screen.
I knew who it was.
I could feel it.
I wanted to take the glass in my hand and throw it against the wall.
Instead I said, “I’m tired. Going to bed.”
He barely looked up.
“Night.”
I climbed the stairs.
Ten minutes later,
I heard the television.
I waited.
Then quietly retrieved my suitcase.
The old back staircase led from the upstairs hallway to the laundry room.
Mark couldn’t see it from the living room.
I carried the suitcase down one step at a time.
At the side door, I stopped.
For thirty-one years, that house had been my home.
I had painted the kitchen cabinets.
Raised Daniel there.
Held Mark’s mother there when she died.
Hosted Christmas.
Birthdays.
Anniversaries.
There were scratches on the pantry door marking Daniel’s height from age four to seventeen.
And suddenly I understood something.
A home is not walls.
It’s the story you believe happened inside them.
Mine had just become unreliable.
I opened the door and left.
Daniel was waiting behind the garage in his truck.
I got in.
He looked at my suitcase.
“So it’s real.”
“It was real before the suitcase.”
He nodded.
Then
his phone vibrated.
He looked down.
His face changed.
“What?”
He handed me the phone.
A message from Jenna.
Love you. Wish you were home. This night feels lonely.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Daniel laughed.
The sound frightened me.
“She sent that from the hotel?”
“Probably.”
He typed something.
I grabbed his wrist.
“What are you saying?”
He showed me.
Miss you too. Long shift tonight. See you in the morning.
I slowly released him.
“Good.”
“I feel sick.”
“I know.”
He sent the message.
Three dots appeared.
Then Jenna replied with a heart.
Daniel turned the screen facedown.
“What’s the plan?”
We spent the next four hours at my sister Ruth’s empty lake cabin twenty miles outside town.
Ruth lived in Arizona six months a year and had given me a spare key.
