My husband and I went into the store to do some regular shopping.
As we were approaching the checkout, he stepped away to take a phone call. I paid and was about to leave when an elderly security guard came up to me.
“Is that your husband?”
I nodded.
He lowered his voice.
“Come with me, dear. This is about your husband.
You’d better see it for yourself.”
Amanda woke up that morning feeling slightly tired. Outside, a light autumn rain was falling, and gray clouds hung low over the city, as if the day had decided to be as ordinary and colorless as dozens of others.
She stretched, threw back the blanket, and headed to the kitchen, where the smell of freshly brewed coffee already filled the air. Ben, her husband, was sitting at the table with his phone in hand, occasionally sipping from his favorite blue mug.
“Good morning,” Amanda said, pouring herself some coffee.
“Morning,” Ben replied shortly, without looking up from the screen.
She sat down across from him, studying him the way you study a room for exits when something feels off.
They had been together for seven years—seven years that had seemed, for the most part, quite happy.
Although lately something had changed. Ben had grown distant, stayed at work longer, and his phone had turned into some kind of forbidden territory.
Amanda pushed away the dark thoughts.
“He’s probably just tired,” she told herself. “His job is stressful.
Lots of pressure.”
“We need to go to the store,” she said aloud, taking a bite of toast. “The fridge is almost empty, and we need to prepare something for the weekend.”
Ben nodded, still buried in his phone.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go after lunch.
I just need to make a couple of calls.”
Amanda looked at him and managed a faint smile. Always those calls, always some errand that couldn’t wait.
But she didn’t argue. She rarely argued at all, and some quiet part of her wondered if that was her mistake—being too accommodating, too pliable, smoothing over every rough edge until there were no edges left.
The day dragged.
Amanda did household chores, sorted through the closet, and tidied the shelves, moving through the apartment on autopilot.
The place was jointly lived in, but registered in her name. That paperwork had been completed after her mother passed away and left Amanda the two-room apartment in a nice neighborhood.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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