I came home early with white roses, expecting to surprise my seven-month-pregnant wife.
I thought I was walking into one of those ordinary little moments marriage is made of, the kind no one posts about because it is too small to explain.
A client meeting ended early.
Traffic was light for once.
The florist on the corner still had white roses in the cooler, the same kind Audrey carried on our wedding day.
I bought them without thinking too hard about it, because Audrey had been tired lately, and I had been gone too much.
That was the story I told myself in the car.
I was working long hours for us.
I was building a safe life for her.
I was doing what husbands do before a baby comes, which is mistake absence for provision and exhaustion for love.
The roses were wrapped in brown paper on the passenger seat when I pulled into the driveway.
Our front porch looked the way it always did.
The little American flag beside the steps lifted in the late-afternoon wind.
The porch light was already on even though the sun had not fully dropped.
Nothing outside warned me that something inside my house had gone rotten.
When I opened the door, the first thing I noticed was the smell.
Bleach.
