What We Don't Say

The iPhone sat between us on the table like a small, glowing monument to everything we'd stopped saying. I watched it pulse with a notification—her name, probably—and I didn't pick it up. That would have required caring enough to look.

'You're not eating your spinach,' David said, not looking up from his own plate. He'd started wearing that hat everywhere now, indoors, at dinner, as if he could hide behind its brim. As if I couldn't still see him.

'I'm not hungry.' The spinach was wilting anyway, dark green leaves collapsed under the weight of olive oil and something bitter—regret, maybe, or just the way we'd learned to season everything with disappointment.

His phone buzzed this time. A sharp, demanding sound. He reached for it automatically, thumb sweeping across the screen, and I watched his face soften in a way it hadn't for me in months. That same face I'd pressed against my chest when his mother died, when he lost his job, when we miscarried in a bathroom stall while the subway rattled beneath us.

I'd loved him through every terrible thing. But I couldn't love him through this.

'Sarah says hi,' he said, and the name landed between us like a stone.

I stood up, chair scraping against the floor. 'Take off the hat, David.' My voice sounded steady, which surprised me. 'Please. Just... take it off.'

He didn't. He just looked at me, really looked at me for the first time all evening, and I saw the spinach stuck between his teeth—green and stubborn and impossible to unsee. How long had I been ignoring things I didn't want to acknowledge? How long had he?

I left my phone on the table. Let them call. Let whoever wanted to find me try.