I uncovered the dishes I had prepared earlier—grilled salmon, roasted vegetables, simple fare. The kind of meals his doctors had recommended after his kidney transplant. Bland, he had complained, until I learned to lace them with flavor, testing recipes until my hands blistered, cooking even when fever left me trembling. He would never admit it, but the only reason he recovered was because I refused to let him starve.
Now he sat, staring at the meal, staring at me, as if he couldn’t reconcile this woman with the wife he had spent years breaking down. For a fleeting second, I caught it—a flicker of guilt, there and gone—when he noticed the limp in my walk as I set the dish down.
We ate in silence, the scrape of silverware echoing louder than words. He didn’t know it yet, but this was our last meal together as husband and wife.
“Evelyn,” he began cautiously, “I drank too much last night. Is your injury… alright?”
I hummed without looking up, not trusting myself to speak.