“Mom, do we have any orange juice?”
Noah shuffled into the kitchen in his pajama pants, hair sticking up in every direction.
“Fridge, sweetheart. Second shelf.”
He poured a glass and squinted at Logan.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Dad, are you picking me up from practice today?”
“Can’t, buddy. I’ve got a late meeting.”
Noah shrugged and wandered off toward the living room.
Logan watched him leave, his mouth pressed into a line that didn’t match his tone.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Course. Just tired. You know how it is.”
“Everything okay?”
I did know.
Or I thought I did.
That was the thing about a marriage of sixteen years.
You stopped questioning the small strangenesses.
You trusted the shape of the person you slept beside.
“I love you,” I said, almost without thinking.
You stopped questioning the small strangenesses.
“I love you too. More than you know.”
He grabbed his keys and left.
I stood in the kitchen, listening to his car pull out of the driveway.
I never could’ve guessed that in a few short hours, my son would come home pale-faced with a whisper that would crack the ground beneath me.
***
Noah stood in the doorway of the kitchen, his bike helmet still clutched in one hand.
His knuckles were white around the strap.
A whisper that would crack the ground beneath me.
I set down the dish towel and studied his face.
“Sweetheart, come sit down. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Mom, I need to tell you something. I saw Dad.”
I smiled and reached for the kettle, already brushing it off in my head.
“He probably ran to the hardware store on his way home. He’s been meaning to fix the back gate all week.”
“No, you don’t understand. He wasn’t alone, Mom. He was with Grandma.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I turned slowly, sure I had misheard him.
“Honey, Grandma lives three hours away. She would have called if she were driving down.”
“I know what I saw. They got out of the same car. Together.”
I laughed then, a light nervous sound that didn’t feel like mine.
“Where were they, then? At the grocery store? Getting coffee?”
Noah looked at the floor, then back up at me.
“They got out of the same car. Together.”
His voice dropped so low that I had to lean in.
“They went into a motel. That old one out on Route 9. The one with the yellow sign.”
Something cold slid down the length of my spine.
I set the kettle on the counter with a small clatter.
“You must have seen someone who looked like them. Two people who resembled them. That happens all the time.”
“They went into a motel.”
