Robert had given it to me on our twentieth anniversary.
It had a small chip along the rim that I refused to fix. I liked that it wasn’t perfect. I liked that it had lived with us.
I was smiling already, because my phone rarely lit up these days for anything other than the things that mattered. A photo of Charlie’s missing tooth. Mia’s face smeared with spaghetti sauce. A question about Sunday dinner. Something small and sweet. Something that would make the quiet house feel less quiet.
I wiped my palms on my jeans, lifted the phone, and looked down.
The smile vanished as if it had been wiped clean.
“Don’t expect me to take care of you when you’re old. I have my own life and family.”
For a second my brain refused to cooperate, the way it does when a loud sound happens too close to your ear. I read it again. Then again. The words sat there, black and blunt and oddly tidy on the screen. There was no typo, no softening phrase, no follow-up.
Just a line drawn like ink across paper.
