The kettle clicked off in my kitchen with a sound like a small decision being made. I stood there with my hands wrapped around a chipped mug that said WORLD’S OKAYEST WIFE—an old office joke I’d kept because it made me laugh on days when laughter felt like work. The tea bag tag stuck to my thumb, and for a moment I thought about how even paper can cling to a story longer than it should.
Outside my window, early morning light filtered through the backyard where dew made the grass look silver. A cardinal hopped along the fence with the confidence of something that knew exactly where it belonged. The wind chime on the porch—the one my mother gave us the year we moved into this house—tapped its soft, patient rhythm.
My phone buzzed on the counter. Not dramatically. Just a plain, businesslike vibration that said the world was still moving whether I felt ready or not.
“Emergency board meeting,” the calendar reminder read. “9:00 AM.”
I stared at it the way you stare at a crack in the ceiling after a storm—half annoyed, half amazed it waited this long to show itself. My name is June Carver, and I’m fifty-one years old.
My husband Grant left six months ago with a suitcase that didn’t look heavy enough to hold twenty-two years of marriage. He’d told me he needed “space,” like our relationship was a closet he’d outgrown. He’d said it kindly, almost apologetically.
He’d kissed my cheek like a man saying goodbye to a neighbor he’d never quite gotten to know. I’d cried exactly once in front of him—a small cry, more leak than flood. Then I’d wiped my face with the sleeve of my cardigan and told him I understood.
That was the part people never believed later. They thought I must have screamed, thrown things, collapsed dramatically. The truth is, I’d spent so long playing the agreeable wife—the one who smiled in photos, the one who let men talk over her at dinner parties, the one who pretended not to notice when people treated her like an expensive accessory—that when my marriage finally cracked, I already had the muscles for staying steady.
I set my mug down and listened to the house breathe around me. The refrigerator hummed. The old floorboard near the pantry gave its familiar sigh.
The porch light clicked off automatically as daylight took over. This house was not big or glamorous. It was just ours—the place where the mailman knew which step creaked, where the neighbor’s dog barked at squirrels like it was his sworn duty, where the maple tree in front had dropped leaves onto our driveway every fall since our first Thanksgiving here.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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