"You going to bed?" I shouted out, but already she was up above. I could hear her preparing in the bathroom, the familiar sounds of her nightly routine. Brush teeth. Wash face. Apply that cream she'd been using the past three years.
When I got up to the floor, she was already in bed with her back to me, blankets over her. My lamp was on but hers was off, throwing this odd shadow on her shoulder. She used to wait up for me. We'd talk about our day, make weekend plans, complain about work. Now she just slept.
"Hey, how was your day?" I asked, getting in bed.
"Fine."
Not bad. Not good. Just fine. Always fine.
I turned off the lamp and lay in the dark, listening to her breathe. It was normal, even. As if she were already asleep. But she wasn't. Elena never slept quickly. She would turn and toss, steal the covers, elbow me in the dark. Now she lay flat and motionless, as if she didn't need space.
It started about six months ago. Maybe more and I simply didn't realize. That's what gradual changes do – they sneak up on you until one day you wake up and you know that everything is different but you can't put your finger on when it was.
Elena still cooked breakfast. She told me "love you" when I was heading off to work, but it sounded mechanical. As if she was reciting lines she'd memorized a decade before.
I explained it to my colleague at work. We were eating lunch at a deli place downtown. "Maybe she's under a lot of stress," Cameron said, picking at his turkey club. "Rachel goes through phases like that. Work issues, family issues. Women are just complicated, man."
But this wasn't a phase. Phases have ups and downs. This was flat. Like someone had turned down the volume on Elena until she was practically invisible.
I started to pay attention. The way she stirred her coffee – counterclockwise, always counterclockwise, but today she did it on autopilot, not even aware she was doing it. The way she welcomed me in the mornings – a peck on the cheek, but she was already elsewhere in her mind.
And her phone. She'd always guarded her phone, but now left it face down wherever she left it. On the counter in the kitchen, on the coffee table, on her nightstand. When it buzzed, she'd glance at it with a flat expression. Not sad, not happy.
"Who was that?" I asked one evening when her phone glowed during dinner.
"Work," she replied, not reaching to answer it.
But it was Saturday evening at 8. Elena was an employee at a marketing firm. They weren't making calls at 8 on a Saturday.
I found the receipt. I was washing her jeans and it was in her jeans pocket – she'd left them in the hamper inside-out, which she never did. Elena was particular about laundry. She always removed things from her pockets, turned items right side out and color-sorted.
The receipt was from a local restaurant. Café Luna. Never heard of such a place. The date was two weeks prior, Tuesday afternoon. Elena had informed me that she had work late that Tuesday Two meals. Two drinks. The cost was $47.83.
I remained there in the laundry room, holding this sheet of paper, and suddenly it all clicked. Elena was having an affair. Elena was what? Having long lunches with coworkers? Or was she meeting her sister and didn't recall mentioning it to me?
I wanted to confront her. I wanted to hold the receipt in front of her and scream at her. But was the way she had been behaving lately held me back, so guarded and distant. As if she were a delicate piece of glass that one wrong move would shatter completely.
I put the receipt away in her pocket and folded the clothes.
The ensuing weeks were hell. I became this individual I didn't know – snooping through her phone while she showered, digging through her purse when she wasn't looking, analyzing every word she said for a hidden message.
She started working late more often. Seriously late, not even "I'll be home by seven" late. She'd walk in the door at nine, sometimes ten, and smell like nothing. That was the odd thing about it. She didn't smell like some guy's other man's cologne, or Chinese food or something shady. She just smelled like outside air.
"Long day?" I'd ask.
"You could say that."
Always vague. I walked by her office one Thursday when she informed me that she would be there until nine. The parking lot was empty aside from a security guard's car. Elena's Honda was nowhere to be found.
That night, when she came home at 9:30, I was in the living room.
"How was work?" I asked.
"Busy. Very busy." She took off her shoes and went into the kitchen. "I'm tired out."
"What were you working on?"
She paused, for only an instant. "The Henderson account. You know how demanding they are."
I nodded. I knew nothing about the Henderson account. Elena stopped talking about work months ago.
On a random Wednesday morning, I woke up and Elena was already gone. She'd left a note on the kitchen counter: "Early meeting. See you tonight."
But I knew she didn't have an early meeting. Elena always hated early meetings, and she hadn't hated anything in months.
I played hooky from work and spent the day cruising around. I was parked outside Café Luna at noon, observing as people entered and exited. Couples in their twenties, businessmen, friends who were meeting for lunch. Ordinary individuals living ordinary lives.
Elena's vehicle wasn't in the parking lot. So part of me was relieved, and some part was let down. At least an affair would be tangible. Something I could define and combat.
When she came home that evening, I sat at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee. She looked surprised to see me there – like she'd forgotten that I was even alive.
"Hey," she said, setting down her purse. "You're home early."
"I was ill."
"Oh." She opened the refrigerator, scanned the contents for a moment, and then shut it without grabbing anything out. "What did you have?"
"The kind where you discover your girlfriend has been deceiving you for months."
She didn’t look surprised at all.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Where were you today, Elena?"
She spun around to look at me, and for a second I thought I saw something pass across her face. But it was gone so quickly that I might have imagined it.
"Work. I said, I had an early meeting."
"Your office was closed. I phoned."
"I took a client off-site."
"What client?"
"Jesus, David. An interrogation?"
"Where were you?"
She braced against the counter, and folded her arms.
"I took a drive," she said finally. "I've been taking drives."
"Months?"
"Months."
I waited for her to tell me something. To tell me why she'd been lying, where she'd really been going, what was happening between us. But she just stood there, looking at me like I was a stranger.
"Then why?" I asked.
"Because I had to be somewhere else."
"But you are somewhere else. You're here, but you're not here. You haven't been here for months."
She slowly nodded, as though I'd finally said something rational to her.
"When did you notice?" she asked.
"Notice what?"
"That you were gone."
The question hit me in the solar plexus. Because I couldn't answer it. I couldn't pinpoint the moment when Elena had stopped being Elena. It had all happened so slowly, so insidiously.
"I don't know," I admitted. "Maybe. maybe I should have noticed earlier."
"You never really even looked at me," she said quietly.
"That's not true."
"When did you ever ask me how I felt? Not how my day was going, not if I needed something from the supermarket. How I felt."
I wanted to answer, but nothing came out.
"When's the last time you've told me about your day, unsolicited, without me asking? When's the last time you've offered to do something with me – not merely sit around and watch television or eat at that restaurant we always do – but actually do something?"
I couldn't respond.
The silence between us grew as wide as a canyon.
"I've been vanishing piece by piece. And you never even noticed until I was all but gone."
"You're having an affair."
She laughed, but it wasn't a laugh of merriment. "With whom? When? I come home at night. I sleep in your bed. I have breakfast with you each morning."
"The receipt? Café Luna. Two meals."
"I eat alone there sometimes. I order two things because I don't know what I want. Because for an hour, I get to be a person who can't decide between the soup and the salad instead of a person who just exists."
I felt something breaking inside my chest. "Elena."
"I tried to talk to you. Not word by word, but I did. I stopped talking about work because you never actually heard in the first place. You'd nod and tell the right things, but your thoughts were somewhere else. I stopped telling you about my day because you never asked the next questions. I stopped being me because you never seemed to notice when I wasn't."
"Why didn't you say something at least?"
"I did. I said everything. But you weren't listening." She pushed back from the counter. "I'm going to pack some stuff."
"Wait, Elena—"
"I've been waiting, David. Months. Waiting for you to listen, to ask, to care. I'm through waiting."
She headed towards the stairs, then halted.
"You asked me where I was," she answered without turning around. "I went to find myself. And I found her. She'd been hiding in coffee shops and late-night drives and quiet moments, waiting for someone to notice that she was missing."
I sat there a long time after she'd disappeared upstairs, after I'd listened to her getting about in the bedroom, after the front door had slammed behind her. The house was as it had been for months – quiet, empty, waiting to be brought back to life.
But now I understood why.
I'd lived with a ghost, and I'd been the one to murder her.
I'd never inquired about why she liked it. I'd never asked her lots of things.
My phone buzzed. Text message from Elena: "I'm going to be at my sister's for a while. We need to talk, but not immediately. I have to get some things straightened out first."
I started to write a response, and deleted it. Started again, deleted again. What was I supposed to write? That I was sorry? That I would change? That I loved her?
All of these things were true. But they weren't enough.
I put the phone down and made myself a coffee. I sat at the kitchen table and consumed it. It was bitter, far too strong. I didn't know that coffee could be so bitter. Elena always brewed it to perfection. I thought of calling her. Grabbing the car and driving over to her sister's house and making some grand announcement. Bringing flowers, apologies, promises to change. Then I thought, perhaps I needed to disappear and then find myself. The me that used to listen. That used to ask questions. That used to glance at the woman I loved instead of just assuming she'd always be there.
I washed out my coffee and sat down, to think back to the last time I'd really looked at her. It was going to be a long morning.
>>> Image(s) are AI generated.
