Over the past few months, he changed.
At first, it was small things. After dinner, he would sit at the kitchen table long after his plate was empty, staring at the wall as if something were written there only he could see.
The television would be on in the background, some sitcom we used to enjoy, but he would not laugh at the jokes anymore.
I would fill the silence the only way I knew how. I would tell him how my shift had gone at the store.
I mentioned Mrs. Henderson arguing over expired coupons as if it were a matter of principle. Then I described a teenage boy who tried to pay with pennies, his face red while the line behind him grew impatient.
He would nod.
But I could tell he was not listening. His eyes were somewhere else.
I asked him one night, “Are you tired?”
He shrugged. “Just work.”
It did not feel like just work.
He became distant. Quiet in a different way. Not the comfortable quiet we had grown into over decades, but something heavier. Like words were sitting behind his teeth that he refused to let out.
At first, I thought it was about a woman.
The thought embarrassed me.
I remember standing at my register, scanning a loaf of bread, thinking, At our age?
The idea felt absurd. We were not young or exciting. We were two ordinary people with creaky knees, reading glasses perched on our noses, and a routine that rarely changed.
Still, something was not right.
Every time I asked him if something was bothering him, he would smile and say, “Everything’s fine.”
Everything’s fine.
He said it so easily. Too easily.
