The house was quiet in that specific way it gets at 2:47 in the morning, when even the refrigerator seems to be holding its breath.
I’d fallen asleep on the couch again. It had been happening more and more lately, in ways I hadn’t let myself think about too hard. Ethan was in Las Vegas for a work conference, the third one in six months, and without him the house settled into a stillness I told myself I would miss when he got home.
Half-asleep, I was already building the little rituals of his return in my mind. Coffee made for two. His key in the lock. The ordinary machinery of a life that felt, from the inside, completely solid.I was thirty-four. I’d been married for six years to a man I met at a networking event when I was twenty-seven, back when he was the sort of person who knew everyone in the room and made it look easy.
I worked in project management for a regional construction firm, a job that needs a particular kind of person: calm, organized, comfortable in the space between what the plan says will happen and what actually happens. I was good at it. I was good at most things that involve tracking a dozen moving parts and not panicking when one of them slips.
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The marriage had been its own kind of project, if I’m being honest.
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