The night before Mark’s flight to Denver, Claire stood in the kitchen holding the pot of rosemary like it was a dead mouse.
“You asked for a romantic gesture,” he said, already packing his laptop bag. “This is romantic. It smells nice, and it’s practical—you can put it in the roast chicken. It’ll last months, not like those overpriced bouquets that wilt in three days.”
She set the pot on the counter. The tiny green spikes quivered. “Mark, I asked you to surprise me. To show me you still see me as more than the co-manager of this household. And you brought me a plant I can buy at Trader Joe’s for four bucks.”
“Four ninety-nine,” he corrected.
Claire didn’t speak to him for the rest of the evening. She slept facing the wall, their golden retriever Gus wedged between them like a fuzzy mediator. At five in the morning, Mark kissed her forehead—she pretended to be asleep—and left for the airport.
Two weeks. Fourteen days of just her, six-year-old Lily, and a dog who believed the vacuum cleaner was a demon. The washing machine had died, the freezer was full of chicken nuggets, and a simmering resentment hovered in the air, faintly scented with rosemary.
His first text arrived while she was fishing a LEGO out of the garbage disposal.
*Landed. Denver is flat. Hotel room smells like bleach and regret. How’s life?*
She typed back: *Gus ate a sock. Lily refused to wear anything that wasn’t a unicorn costume. I’m drinking wine from a coffee mug. Your plant is thriving. I’m not.*
*Save the rosemary. We’ll use it for a fancy dinner when I get back.*
*You’re a moron.*
*Your moron.*
She stared at that reply for a long minute. The same stupid joke he’d been making since they started dating twelve years ago. It used to make her laugh. Now it just reminded her how little had changed.
Day two. He sent a photo of his hotel breakfast—pale scrambled eggs, toast, a tiny plastic cup of orange juice. *I’d kill for your burnt toast.*
*Our toaster is broken too. I’m using the broiler. Lily says it tastes like campfire.*
He sent a laughing emoji. She didn’t.
Day three. Lily got sent home with a fever. Claire spent the afternoon on the couch with a miserable child and a dog who kept trying to lick her face. When Mark texted, *How’s my girl?* she sent back a photo of Lily, red-nosed and wrapped in blankets.
*Not that girl. You. How are you?*
*I’m fine.* She wasn’t. The repair guy had said the washing machine needed a part that would take a week. She’d been washing Lily’s sheets in the bathtub after the kid threw up on them.
Day four, after midnight, a longer message came.
*I can’t sleep. There’s a streetlight outside my window that blinks every twenty seconds. I was lying here counting the blinks, and I realized I miss the sound of you breathing. Not the house. Not Lily. Not Gus. Just you. The way you breathe when you’re asleep—a little puff, puff, tiny snore. Remember when we first moved in together, and you were so embarrassed by your snoring that you tried to sleep on the couch? And I dragged you back to bed because I couldn’t sleep without it.*
Claire read it four times. Then she went into the bathroom, sat on the edge of the tub, and cried. In twelve years, he’d never written anything like that. He was a man who expressed love by checking the tire pressure in her car and remembering to buy the coffee she liked. Words weren’t his currency.
She didn’t reply that night. She was too scared that if she did, he’d snap back to his pragmatic self and the man who’d written that message would vanish like a ghost.
Day five, he texted again. *You think I was drunk? I wasn’t. I’m just two time zones away and missing you so much it’s making me stupid.*
*Stupider than usual?*
*Much stupider. I went to a Rockies game alone today. Sat in the nosebleeds. Bought a hot dog that cost twelve dollars. Thought about the first time we went to a Mariners game and you spilled your entire soda on the guy in front of us. He turned around ready to yell, but you smiled and said, “I’m so sorry, I’m just so excited,” and he ended up buying us peanuts.*
*You never told me you remember that.*
*I remember everything. I just forget to say it.*
That was the crack. The fault line she hadn’t even realized was there—the silence, the assumption she just knew, the practical love that had slowly buried the romantic love under years of mortgage payments and parent-teacher conferences and dog vomit on the rug.
Day six, he asked what she was wearing. She said, *Sweatpants with a hole in the knee.* He said, *Wear the green dress. The one with the little buttons down the front. I keep picturing you in it.*
The reunion was still a week away. She went to the closet and pulled out the green dress. It had been in the back since last Easter. She hung it on the bedroom door, like a promise.
The next days blurred into a rhythm of texts. He told her about the terrible team-building exercises at the branch office, about the colleague who ate tuna sandwiches at his desk, about the hotel elevator that played a creepy instrumental of “Girl from Ipanema.” She told him about the raccoon that knocked over the trash cans, about Lily’s newfound obsession with Taylor Swift, about how Gus had cornered the vacuum and barked at it for forty minutes before falling asleep.
Day eleven, he didn’t text all day. She called, sent three messages—nothing. By eight that evening, she’d convinced herself he was dead in a Denver ditch. She called the hotel, but they wouldn’t give out guest information. She was halfway through drafting a message to his boss when her phone buzzed.
*I’m alive. Phone died. Left my charger in a conference room. Had to borrow one from a guy in accounting who made me listen to a thirty-minute pitch about his pyramid scheme in exchange. Sorry. I hate that I made you worry.*
*I thought you were dead.*
*I’m too annoying to die. I’ll be home tomorrow. Gate C12. 3:15 p.m. Wear the dress.*
The next afternoon, she stood at the arrivals gate in the green dress, Lily holding her hand, Gus left with a neighbor. Her heart was a hummingbird. She spotted him before he saw her—gray suit, tired eyes, a massive bouquet of sunflowers in one hand. Sunflowers. Her favorite. She’d mentioned it once, years ago, at a farmers’ market.
He walked up, handed her the flowers, and pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry I’m such an idiot.”
She buried her face in his shoulder. “You’re my idiot.”
He pulled back, looking at the dress. “You wore it.”
“You asked me to.”
Later that night, after pizza and a movie, after Lily had fallen asleep and Gus had claimed the entire bed, they sat on the couch, her feet in his lap. The sunflowers stood in a vase on the coffee table.
“I meant it,” he said. “About trying harder. About saying things.”
“You don’t have to buy sunflowers every day.”
“I know. But I’m going to.” He reached over and plucked a small sprig from the bouquet, tucking it behind her ear. “And I’ll keep the rosemary plant. It’s a good reminder.”
“Of what?”
“That I’m a moron who once thought a cooking herb could replace a bouquet.”
Claire laughed, a real laugh, the kind that made Gus thump his tail in his sleep. “I still have it, you know. The rosemary. It’s on the windowsill. I’ve been watering it.”
Mark raised an eyebrow. “You hate that plant.”
“I hate that you thought it was enough. But I love that you’re my idiot.” She leaned into him. “So I’m keeping it. As evidence.”
The next morning, he came home from a coffee run with a single pink peony from the corner bodega. The morning after that, a bunch of daisies. A week later, she had seven different vases scattered around the house, and the rosemary plant sat in the middle of the kitchen table, right next to a jar of fresh wildflowers.
Gus sniffed the peony, sneezed, and went back to plotting the vacuum’s demise. Claire watched Mark buttering toast for Lily, the morning sun catching the gray at his temples, and turned back to the sink before he could catch her smiling.
