The grocery bag was too full and the twisted paper handle was cutting a red groove into Marissa’s fingers by the time she turned up the driveway, but she was thinking about avocados. That was all. The firm had let everyone out early because the server crashed just before four, and she had stopped at the market almost on reflex, buying the things that lived in the back of her mind as Caleb’s preferences: avocados, limes, cilantro, the expensive tortilla chips he complained about every Thursday while finishing the entire bag before dinner.
She had also picked up a new basil plant near the checkout because the one by the grill had been looking tired, and Caleb once said that basil made the patio feel like home.
She would think about that word later. Home.
The way it had meant one thing in the morning and another thing entirely by five forty-two. Nothing about the front of the house suggested anything.
The sprinklers were doing their evening rotation over the strip of grass between the mailbox and the sidewalk.
The curtains in the upstairs bedroom were half open the way she always left them. Caleb’s truck sat in the driveway so polished it held a clean reflection of the sky, which made her think briefly of the argument they had dressed up as a conversation when he bought it. He said he deserved it after a brutal quarter.
She said a person could deserve something and still need to count the money first.
He had kissed her forehead and told her she worried beautifully, which was his particular way of making dismissal sound like affection, a trick she had spent years almost believing was charming. She shifted the grocery bag to her other hand, unlocked the front door, and walked through the hall toward the kitchen.
The cool indoor air met her at the entrance. She was thinking about putting the cilantro in water so it would stay fresh, thinking about whether there was enough sour cream in the refrigerator, thinking about the small logistics of a Thursday evening in a marriage she believed was real.
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