Beneath the Surface

The wilted spinach lay limp in the colander, much like Elena felt most days. She ran cold water over it, watching leaves that had once been vibrant surrender to gravity. In the living room, the TV droned on — some reality show Marcus had been watching for hours, the cable box glowing like a dormant eye.

'So,' she called out, not really expecting an answer. 'Dinner's almost ready.'

No response.

Elena dried her hands on a dish towel and stepped into the hallway. That's when she saw it — Marcus's phone facedown on the coffee table, but she recognized the telltale gesture. The quick tilt, the sudden pocket motion. He'd done it three times today.

She knew she was being ridiculous. Marcus wasn't a spy. He was a middle-aged accountant who made terrible puns and left socks balled like dead insects near the hamper. But lately Elena had been swimming through days thick with suspicion, drowning in whispers of her own making.

They hadn't made love in six months. They hadn't had a conversation that wasn't about bills or schedules in longer than that. The distance between them had expanded silently, like hairline cracks in a foundation you notice only when the walls start leaning.

'Marcus?'

He jumped. 'What? Sorry. Show's getting good.'

Elena stood there, spinach forgotten in the kitchen, cable TV illuminating his handsome, familiar, utterly unreadable face. She wanted to ask who he was texting. She wanted to demand he look at her, really look at her, the way he used to when spinach stuck in her teeth made him laugh until he cried.

Instead she said, 'Never mind,' and returned to the kitchen to cook dinner for two people who, somehow, without anyone noticing, had become strangers in the same house.