Her phone buzzes once. A message, from Ken: Working late. Don’t wait up. She stares until the gray typing bubble appears and disappears and appears again, a heartbeat that cannot commit to beating. No second message comes. She types Okay and deletes it. She types Where are you really? and deletes that. She sets the phone face-down on the counter as if darkness could absorb its weight.
She opens the cabinet above the stove and takes down the jar of matches. She unscrews the lid and pours one into her palm, wood cool against skin. She strikes it against the strip on the jar and holds the little flame at eye level. It’s smaller than she remembers—delicate, eager, a bright insistence against air. She walks to the bookshelf and hesitates over where to set it. There is no candle. No wick waiting. She is a woman holding fire with nowhere official to put it.
“Good news,” she says aloud, testing her voice in the room. It sounds like someone else’s. She drops the match in the sink and runs the tap. The flame hisses into nothing, a neat conversion: bright to steam, heat to gone.
Back in the living room, the photo watches her. The tilt has become bolder somehow, as if claiming ground. She reaches out without thinking. Her index finger presses the frame, nudges it right, nudges again, careful, careful. It squares. For a second it is perfect, and the air shifts as if in relief. She steps back and breathes and then—lightly, as if reacting to something in the house’s bones—the frame slips, returning to its wrongness.
She can’t help it; she laughs. It’s short, without joy, but real enough to count. The sound startles her. She looks toward the door, half expecting Ken to appear and say, “What’s funny?” She’s not sure she could answer. She’s not sure she wants to.
From the hallway, the thermostat clicks. The heater wakes and pushes a tired exhale through the vents. Warmth crawls along the baseboards. Lilian rubs her arms. It is midmorning, but it feels later, as if the day has quietly absolved itself of the obligation to improve.
On the kitchen table sits a blue pen with its cap bitten. She takes it and a scrap of paper and writes in small letters, Straighten photo. She places the note under the salt shaker, an instruction to herself that looks like a message to a stranger. She wonders who will find it first. She wonders whether the person who reads it will be the person who can.
Before she leaves for work, she stands in front of the wall one last time and studies the captured versions of themselves—their open faces, their bright future standing off-frame waiting to be invited into the shot. She doesn’t speak to them. She does not ask for advice. She simply looks until her eyes blur and the two of them become a pale smear of white dress and dark suit, as if the image were a memory dissolving in water.
When she turns away, she feels the familiar tug in her chest, the elastic of the life they have built. It always stretches. It always snaps back. That is the horror, and the comfort, and the trap.
She steps into her shoes by the door. She checks for her keys. She opens the door and hesitates, listening, as if the house might call her back by name. It doesn’t. She pulls the door closed and locks it and stands on the front step with the day around her, bright and indifferent. In the window, the edge of the white frame catches the light. From where she stands, she cannot tell if the photo inside it is straight or not.
She decides not to look. She walks to the car. The fear is not that she’ll find it crooked. The fear is that she’ll find it perfect and still feel the same.
It started with silence—again. The kind that seeps into a room until it begins to sound like a warning. Lilian had grown used to Ken’s silences, but this one felt different. It wasn’t cold or angry this time. It was vacant, like the silence of an abandoned house that still holds the shape of people who used to live there.
Three days had passed since their last conversation—if it could even be called that. They had stood in the kitchen, on opposite sides of the counter, trading short sentences like people who had run out of words years ago but were still trying to make noise. “I’m fine,” Ken had said. “Okay,” Lilian had answered. And that was it.
She opens the cabinet above the stove and takes down the jar of matches. She unscrews the lid and pours one into her palm, wood cool against skin. She strikes it against the strip on the jar and holds the little flame at eye level. It’s smaller than she remembers—delicate, eager, a bright insistence against air. She walks to the bookshelf and hesitates over where to set it. There is no candle. No wick waiting. She is a woman holding fire with nowhere official to put it.
“Good news,” she says aloud, testing her voice in the room. It sounds like someone else’s. She drops the match in the sink and runs the tap. The flame hisses into nothing, a neat conversion: bright to steam, heat to gone.
Back in the living room, the photo watches her. The tilt has become bolder somehow, as if claiming ground. She reaches out without thinking. Her index finger presses the frame, nudges it right, nudges again, careful, careful. It squares. For a second it is perfect, and the air shifts as if in relief. She steps back and breathes and then—lightly, as if reacting to something in the house’s bones—the frame slips, returning to its wrongness.
She can’t help it; she laughs. It’s short, without joy, but real enough to count. The sound startles her. She looks toward the door, half expecting Ken to appear and say, “What’s funny?” She’s not sure she could answer. She’s not sure she wants to.
From the hallway, the thermostat clicks. The heater wakes and pushes a tired exhale through the vents. Warmth crawls along the baseboards. Lilian rubs her arms. It is midmorning, but it feels later, as if the day has quietly absolved itself of the obligation to improve.
On the kitchen table sits a blue pen with its cap bitten. She takes it and a scrap of paper and writes in small letters, Straighten photo. She places the note under the salt shaker, an instruction to herself that looks like a message to a stranger. She wonders who will find it first. She wonders whether the person who reads it will be the person who can.
Before she leaves for work, she stands in front of the wall one last time and studies the captured versions of themselves—their open faces, their bright future standing off-frame waiting to be invited into the shot. She doesn’t speak to them. She does not ask for advice. She simply looks until her eyes blur and the two of them become a pale smear of white dress and dark suit, as if the image were a memory dissolving in water.
When she turns away, she feels the familiar tug in her chest, the elastic of the life they have built. It always stretches. It always snaps back. That is the horror, and the comfort, and the trap.
She steps into her shoes by the door. She checks for her keys. She opens the door and hesitates, listening, as if the house might call her back by name. It doesn’t. She pulls the door closed and locks it and stands on the front step with the day around her, bright and indifferent. In the window, the edge of the white frame catches the light. From where she stands, she cannot tell if the photo inside it is straight or not.
She decides not to look. She walks to the car. The fear is not that she’ll find it crooked. The fear is that she’ll find it perfect and still feel the same.
It started with silence—again. The kind that seeps into a room until it begins to sound like a warning. Lilian had grown used to Ken’s silences, but this one felt different. It wasn’t cold or angry this time. It was vacant, like the silence of an abandoned house that still holds the shape of people who used to live there.
Three days had passed since their last conversation—if it could even be called that. They had stood in the kitchen, on opposite sides of the counter, trading short sentences like people who had run out of words years ago but were still trying to make noise. “I’m fine,” Ken had said. “Okay,” Lilian had answered. And that was it.
