Bob’s mother, Nancy, was the other name I never got to say out loud in our house. She and Bob hadn’t spoken in years, and every time I asked why, his face went flat.
“It’s complicated. She made her choice.”
“Bob, she’s your mother.”
“Penelope. Please.”
The only proof my mother-in-law (MIL) still existed at all was one faded family photo he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk: a woman with kind eyes and a stubborn jaw.
I used to sneak looks at that picture when Bob was at work, wondering what could have broken a family so completely.
Lately, though, other small things had started catching my eye.
My husband now kept his phone face down on the counter.
He used to leave it charging in the open, next to the toaster. Now it lived screen-down, always.
Bob also showered the second he walked through the door. Not after dinner. Not before bed. The instant he got home, before he’d even set his keys down, he was in the bathroom with the water running.
“You feeling okay?” I asked him one night.
“Every night?”
He gave me a look, and I let it go.
That’s what I did back then. I let things go and told myself I was being a good wife instead of a scared one.
But standing at the kitchen sink one evening, watching his taillights disappear down our street for the thousandth time, I felt something I hadn’t let myself feel in three years. A small, quiet tug in my chest that said, “Something isn’t right, and you already know it.”
I turned off the faucet. I dried my hands on the dish towel. I looked at the empty driveway and the porch light he’d fixed, and I whispered to no one at all.
“What are you washing off, Bob?”
Our anniversary was the following night.
And that was the night I stopped looking away.
The candles were already burning low by the time I stopped pretending I wasn’t watching the clock.
Six twenty-eight. Two minutes left.
I smoothed the front of the navy dress Bob once said made me look like the young woman he married.
The roast for our romantic dinner was still warm. The wine was opened.
I had rehearsed a joke about how tonight, “Uncle John would just have to survive without you.”
At exactly 6:30 p.m., I heard the jingle of Bob’s car keys coming off the hook by the door.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whispered.
My husband walked into the dining room, already holding his coat. He barely glanced at the table before pulling it on. He barely glanced at me, too.
“Uncle John’s cat is stuck in a tree,” he said.
I actually laughed.
“His cat,” I repeated. “Tonight? On our anniversary night, Bob?”
“I don’t know how he gets Bob! I’ve never met him! In seven years of marriage, I’ve never met him!”
Bob buttoned his coat as if I hadn’t spoken.
“Tell him to call the fire department,” I said. “That’s what fire departments are for. Bob, look at me!”
My husband looked at me the way you look at a piece of furniture you’re about to move.
“I didn’t realize you were so heartless,” he said.
Then he left. The door clicked shut behind him, gentle, almost polite, and somehow that was worse than a slam.
I sat down at the table I’d spent all afternoon setting.
I stared at his empty chair until the candle wax started pooling on the cloth.
Something finally gave.
I don’t remember deciding to go upstairs. I just remember standing in the guest room, pulling open the drawer where Bob kept his old address book, the one with family members’ numbers.
I was shaking with rage. I flipped past aunts and cousins.
And there, in Bob’s handwriting from almost a decade ago, was Uncle John’s landline.
I dialed.
It rang four times. Then an older woman answered, warm and a little breathless, as if she’d hurried to the phone.
“Hello?”
