“It was eating me alive, Dana,” she’d said.
Another woman at the table nodded along. “I think everybody checks eventually.”
I laughed. “I don’t.”
They both looked at me like I’d claimed to have never once locked my car. “Never?”
I shook my head. “We’ve just never needed that.”
We’ve just never needed that.
That evening, folding laundry, I told Elliot about the conversation. He smiled without looking up from the pile of towels.
“I’d rather you ask me anything than spend a night wondering,” he said.
It wasn’t a grand declaration. Just another ordinary sentence, in an ordinary marriage, on an ordinary Tuesday.
Just another ordinary sentence in an ordinary marriage.
Thursday morning started the way most of ours did — coffee, bacon, the sound of Elliot shaving upstairs. I packed his lunch while mentally running through the rest of my day. Groceries. A stop at the bookstore. I still hadn’t ordered the anniversary gift I’d been agonizing over for weeks.
I reached toward the fruit bowl for a banana. Elliot’s watch sat beside it on the counter, charging.
