The woman in the glass had my mother’s tired eyes.
I barely recognized myself.
Not because of my age, but because for years I had been everything for everyone except myself.
Somewhere between bills, back pain, grocery lists, and worrying about everyone else, I disappeared.
Howard noticed only when he needed an excuse.
I didn’t know it then, but that was the last ordinary morning I’d ever spend in that house.
I disappeared.
***
The suitcase was already open on the bed when I walked in. Howard was folding shirts I’d ironed two days earlier. He didn’t look up.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I think you already know, Jane.”
I stood in the doorway, one hand still on the frame, as if my body needed something to hold on to before the rest of me caught up.
my husband finally turned. His eyes did that quick sweep of my hair, face, and the old cardigan I wore around the house, then landed somewhere over my shoulder.
“I think you already know.”
Then he said the words I’d never forget.
“You’re just not beautiful to me anymore.”
I heard the words. I just couldn’t feel them yet.
I looked down at my hands. Dry skin from too many sinks. Chipped nail polish I kept meaning to redo. A wedding ring that suddenly weighed more than the 31 years behind it.
“Is it Paige?” I asked.
He flinched at her name, then squared his shoulders like a man who’d rehearsed this moment.
He said the words I’d never forget.
“Paige is different. She’s, I don’t know, alive. She makes me feel as if I’m not done yet. I’m only 56, Jane. I can’t keep living as if I’m waiting for the end.”
“And what was I doing, Howard? Dying?”
“You are tired. You’ve been tired for years.”
I wanted to scream that, of course, I was tired. I’d been carrying our whole life on my back while he scrolled through his phone. Instead, I just nodded once, like a woman accepting a delivery she hadn’t ordered.
