I kept my eyes almost closed.<\/p>\n
Dererick stood beside the dresser with the bag hanging from his gloved hand.<\/p>\n
I could hear the clock on his nightstand, though I could not see its numbers from where I lay.<\/p>\n
He shifted his feet.<\/p>\n
The floor made a faint sound beneath him.<\/p>\n
I tried to remember how I had been lying when I first pretended to sleep. I kept my shoulders relaxed and my fingers loose against the pillow.<\/p>\n
My body wanted to move.<\/p>\n
I refused to let it.<\/p>\n
Dererick looked toward the door.<\/p>\n
Then he looked at the bed.<\/p>\n
I could feel his attention without opening my eyes any farther.<\/p>\n
For one terrible moment, I thought he had noticed me watching him.<\/p>\n
He stood there long enough for my fear to become almost unbearable.<\/p>\n
Then he turned away.<\/p>\n
His footsteps moved toward the doorway.<\/p>\n
I listened until I could no longer hear them clearly.<\/p>\n
I did not follow.<\/p>\n
I did not sit up.<\/p>\n
I remained on the mattress, staring at the narrow strip of darkness between my eyelids.<\/p>\n
I had spent days wondering whether I was making too much of an ordinary moment.<\/p>\n
Now I was afraid that even looking at him had become dangerous.<\/p>\n
The house settled around me.<\/p>\n
A faint sound came from somewhere beyond the bedroom, followed by silence.<\/p>\n
I could not tell where he had gone or what he was doing.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know.<\/p>\n
I wanted not to know.<\/p>\n
Both feelings were so strong that I could barely separate them.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I opened my eyes fully.<\/p>\n
The dresser stood in its usual place.<\/p>\n
The bedroom door remained open.<\/p>\n
Nothing had been knocked over. Nothing looked disturbed.<\/p>\n
The ordinary appearance of the room felt almost insulting.<\/p>\n
I sat up slowly and looked toward the doorway.<\/p>\n
I considered getting out of bed.<\/p>\n
I could have walked into the hall and checked whether Dererick was downstairs. I could have asked him what he was doing, pretending I had woken up and noticed him missing.<\/p>\n
Instead, I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and stayed where I was.<\/p>\n
I did not trust myself to speak normally.<\/p>\n
If I saw him, I might ask a question I could not take back.<\/p>\n
If he looked at me, I might reveal everything through my face.<\/p>\n
I had no idea what I would do if he smiled and told me to go back to sleep.<\/p>\n
So I waited.<\/p>\n
I watched the clock until the numbers changed again.<\/p>\n
I listened to every small sound the house made.<\/p>\n
At some point, the quiet began to feel heavier than the noises had.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether Dererick was doing something that required the gloves.<\/p>\n
I wondered why he needed the bag.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether the tea had been part of the same mystery.<\/p>\n
I had no evidence connecting those things.<\/p>\n
I only had the order in which I had seen them.<\/p>\n
First the tea.<\/p>\n
Then the gloves.<\/p>\n
Then the bag.<\/p>\n
And now the same things had appeared again.<\/p>\n
That was enough to keep me awake.<\/p>\n
When I finally heard footsteps approaching the bedroom, I lay down and closed my eyes.<\/p>\n
The steps stopped outside the door.<\/p>\n
I could hear the faint rustle of clothing.<\/p>\n
Then Dererick entered.<\/p>\n
He moved quietly across the room.<\/p>\n
The mattress dipped as he climbed into bed.<\/p>\n
I remained still while he adjusted the covers.<\/p>\n
He settled onto his side.<\/p>\n
For a while, neither of us moved.<\/p>\n
I could hear his breathing beside me.<\/p>\n
It sounded ordinary.<\/p>\n
That was the word I kept returning to.<\/p>\n
Ordinary.<\/p>\n
The man lying beside me was the same man who remembered my favorite crackers, brought me tea, and found my missing socks.<\/p>\n
He was also the man I had watched putting on gloves in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n
I could not make those versions of him fit together.<\/p>\n
I wanted to turn toward him and ask what I had seen.<\/p>\n
Instead, I stared into the darkness.<\/p>\n
I had never felt so alone beside another person.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I heard his breathing deepen.<\/p>\n
I waited longer than I needed to before allowing myself to move.<\/p>\n
Then I turned onto my back and looked at the ceiling.<\/p>\n
The night seemed to stretch endlessly ahead of me.<\/p>\n
I thought about the tea I had poured away.<\/p>\n
I thought about the black bag.<\/p>\n
I thought about how easily I had almost convinced myself that nothing was wrong.<\/p>\n
The frightening part was not that I had failed to understand my husband.<\/p>\n
It was that I had been willing to doubt my own instincts simply because understanding him differently would hurt too much.<\/p>\n
I had wanted to preserve my marriage by refusing to examine it.<\/p>\n
Now I was beginning to understand that silence did not preserve anything.<\/p>\n
It only left me alone with questions.<\/p>\n
By the time the first light reached the curtains, I had made one decision.<\/p>\n
I would not confront him that morning.<\/p>\n
I would not pretend I had discovered something I could not explain.<\/p>\n
But I would stop accepting his reassurances as answers to questions I had never asked.<\/p>\n
I would have to find a way to understand what was happening.<\/p>\n
For now, I got out of bed and went downstairs.<\/p>\n
The kitchen was cold beneath my bare feet.<\/p>\n
The familiar mug stood in the cupboard, its chipped handle turned toward the wall.<\/p>\n
I took it down.<\/p>\n
I held it for a moment, then placed it on the counter.<\/p>\n
I did not know what I expected to learn from looking at it.<\/p>\n
There was nothing to see.<\/p>\n
No sign of what I feared.<\/p>\n
No explanation for why I had poured away the tea.<\/p>\n
I put the mug back.<\/p>\n
Then I made myself breakfast and waited for Dererick to wake.<\/p>\n
When he finally came downstairs, I was sitting at the table with my laptop open.<\/p>\n
He looked tired.<\/p>\n
He rubbed his face and asked whether I had slept well.<\/p>\n
I looked at him for a moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot really.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pulled out a chair.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat's wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n
I could have told him.<\/p>\n
The words were there.<\/p>\n
Instead, I looked down at my screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing. I just woke up a few times.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cTry to get some rest tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
I almost laughed at the simplicity of his answer.<\/p>\n
I did not.<\/p>\n
I watched him prepare his coffee and wondered how many more mornings I could sit across from him without asking what I needed to ask.<\/p>\n
Then I understood something that frightened me almost as much as the bag.<\/p>\n
I was no longer waiting to discover whether I had a reason to be suspicious.<\/p>\n
I was waiting to discover how much I could safely admit that I had seen.<\/p>\n
I kept my eyes almost closed. Dererick stood beside the dresser with the bag hanging from his gloved hand. I could hear the clock on his nightstand, though I could … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feel-every-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18118,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18098\/revisions\/18118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}