I brought the suitcase into the bedroom anyway and set it near her side of the closet. Her side still looked like hers, but untouched. Dresses arranged by color. Two blazers under garment bags. Shoes in clear boxes. A drawer cracked open exactly the way she had left it before her last trip.
The room didn’t feel abandoned.
It felt paused.
When I came back, Olivia was in the kitchen pouring water into a glass. Tiny had wedged himself between her and the cabinet as if proximity might prevent future travel.
She drank half the glass, then looked around. “House survived.”
“Mostly.”
“Did he eat the fern again?”
“No. He moved on to a stuffed duck.”
She glanced toward the living room where the ruined duck lay near his bed. “That’s new.”
“Yeah.”
I should have moved it. I hadn’t thought.
Olivia noticed the toy longer than she needed to. Not with suspicion. Just curiosity. A piece of household information she hadn’t been here to receive.
“Cute,” she said.
Tiny lumbered over, picked up the duck, and carried it to her. It squeaked weakly, a dying sound.
“Oh, that is upsetting.” She took it from him, inspected the torn seam, then handed it back. “Congratulations on your murder.”
Tiny accepted the praise as his due.
The moment should have been easy. It would have been, once.
I watched her at the island with her glass in both hands and saw all of it at the same time. The woman I had married. The friend I had stopped calling first. The person who knew my parents’ birthdays and how I took coffee when I was exhausted. The stranger who had to look around the kitchen to see what had changed while she was gone.
She leaned her hip against the counter. “How’s the team?”
“Good. Focused.”
“That sounds like coach language for exhausted.”
“Also that.”
“Jace Holloway still giving you gray hair?”
The name hit like a hand around my throat.
I kept my face even because I had spent half my life learning how not to react under pressure.
“He’s working,” I said.
“He always seemed like he would be a lot to coach.”
“He is.”
“Worth it?”
I looked at my wife across the kitchen, and the answer I had to swallow had nothing to do with the Denver Blizzard.
