He didn't come home that night. The silence he left behind wasn't an absence of sound; it was a physical presence, a thick, suffocating fog that filled every room, making the air heavy and hard to breathe.
I didn't call him. What would I say? I'm sorry — felt insufficient; come home — felt like a demand from a jailer. I checked my phone a hundred times, the glow lighting my face in the dark living room. I both hoped for and dreaded a text—a simple
"I'm okay," or the final, devastating, "We need to talk tomorrow." Nothing came. The screen remained a blank, black eye. The kids, perceptive in their animal way, were clingy and whiny the next morning, as if they could sense the atmospheric pressure in the house had dropped.
"Where's Daddy?" Lily asked over her cereal, her brow furrowed.
