For three months, my husband barely spoke to me, and I was preparing to end our marriage. Then I heard him crying beside our sleeping baby, whispering that he had to leave before I found out. I walked into the nursery and asked what he had been hiding.
Every night, my husband came home, and every night, I missed him.
That Thursday, I reheated the same cup of tea twice while I waited for him.
Lily was finally asleep. The dishwasher hummed, and the baby monitor cast a blue square across the couch cushion.
I missed him.
Before she was born, we sat there with our feet tangled together, complaining about work until one of us started laughing.
The couch still had a pale stain from the night my water broke.
Ryan had wanted to clean it immediately, until I told him perhaps the hospital should come first.
We sat there with our feet tangled together.
He’d laughed all the way to the car, terrified and happy.
I sat over that stain now and listened to him brushing his teeth upstairs.
Now, I rehearsed things to say; the neighbor’s dog had escaped again. Lily had tried sweet potatoes.
Nothing difficult. Nothing that might make him leave.
I rehearsed things to say.
Ryan came downstairs and picked up a clean bottle from the drying rack.
“She’s down?” he asked.
“Almost an hour.”
“Good.”
Ryan came downstairs.
He inspected the bottle, although he’d washed it himself.
“Ryan, can we please talk?”
“About what, Hannah?”
“About us. You’ve barely spoken to me in three months.”
“I’m just tired.”
“Can we please talk?”
“We’re both tired. Lily’s only seven months old, and neither of us sleeps much. But you won’t even kiss me anymore.”
“Hannah, please. Not tonight.”
“Then when?”
He put the bottle down carefully.
“Then when?”
“Did I do something wrong?”
