Portal House - Chapter 9
You Forgot Something
ED:
I glanced backward at the surface of my nightstand, reminding myself to grab the car keys as soon as half-time was called. I stood three feet from my TV screen and watched my quarterback evade a sack as he locked onto his target.
“Babe, you want anything from the store?” I called out, dividing my attention as both announcers got louder with each yard we gained.
“Keep going, keep going,” I cheered under my breath, willing the ball to cross that beautiful white line before the clock ran out.
“Uh, yeah. Just grab the...”
“YES!” Touchdown!
“...on your way out.”
I looked around at the bed, the small desk, the shared dresser, and my wife’s night stand before I realized the TV remote I couldn’t find was in my right hand. I muted the game and grabbed my keys.
“Grab the what?” I called back to her, already hearing the impatience she would add to her second response.
“The list,” she said, walking into our bedroom. She pressed a sheet of yellow lined paper against my chest, slid the remote from my grasp, and sighed.
I chuckled at how far she stretched onto her tiptoes just to kiss my cheek, then I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing to see how many dozen cracks I could get out of her back. Just two this time.
“Jeez, I wasn’t ready,” she giggled. “Are you stopping by the old house today?”
Damn. That question sounded like it required a yes, and I badly wanted to say no. “Sure, did you want me to look for something specific?”
“You don’t have to, I was just gonna say to grab the mail if you do. Love you, be safe.”
She stole a second kiss, this time pulling me down toward her. My little fun-size personal assistant. Or boss. Administrator, maybe?
With two bags of temperature-sensitive groceries in the passenger seat, I pulled my truck into our former driveway and left it running. No cars here today, or workers chattering while fixing the roof or the decayed porch overhang.
Just me. Well, hopefully just me.
I called out into the mostly unfurnished, impossibly dark den. “Hello?” The lone recliner chair taunted me with memories of things that used to hide behind and beneath it. “Just grabbing our mail. Anybody here?”
No voice beyond the echo of my own.
I almost wished my father-in-law would pop out of one of the rooms to give me one of those tight handshakes he probably used to compensate for how I towered over him, asking mundane questions I didn’t care to answer.
I sifted through the stack of about twenty envelopes he’d left on the island, looking for my name, my wife’s, or a misspelling of either.
“You forgot something,” said a whisper.
I dropped most of the stack back onto the kitchen island, while five or six scattered onto the floor.
My heart raced. My ears rang.
I stared at the envelopes on the floor the same way I could imagine a seasoned inmate staring at a bar of soap he’d dropped mid-lather.
Like they belonged to the floor permanently now.
I gathered only what letters I knew were ours from the counter and hurried toward the front door.
The handle wiggled twice.
“Nope. Nope. Nope,” I repeated, as if using the words to fuel me toward the alternate exit.
I went back through the kitchen, then through the multi-purpose room we’d most recently called my wife’s office. Her desk still sat in the corner by the window, one of a few pieces of furniture we’d parted with in the move. She’d always complained it was too big for her, and I couldn’t figure out why. Didn’t people want desks to be big so they could put more crap on them?
The composition notebook caught my eye before I opened the side door. I recognized it as a recent one, fattened by sticky notes and daily note-taking; frayed and dirty from traveling everywhere with her. With only a tiny section in the back of flatter paper that remained unused. Aside from a stack of neatly folded gift bags, it was alone on the desk.
I decided it could stay there for at least another day. I made a mental note to text her about it from the safety of the car, or maybe from the nearest traffic light.
Then I speed-walked to the car and got the hell away from that house.
To Be Continued…