Chapter One — Yet Again
The cupboard door hung open.
Not wide.
Just enough.
Emma stopped in the doorway, grocery bags digging into her fingers. She stared at it for a long moment before letting out a quiet sigh.
“Of course.”
She set the bags on the counter and walked over, pushing the cabinet shut with the palm of her hand.
Click.
It wasn’t just the cupboard.
It was never just the cupboard.
On her way to the laundry room, she found a pair of Mark’s socks lying six inches from the hamper.
She picked them up and dropped them in.
The bathroom light was still on.
She flipped the switch.
His coffee mug sat on the end table instead of in the sink.
She carried it to the kitchen.
None of these things took more than a few seconds.
It wasn’t the time.
It was the again.
Every morning, Mark rushed out the door for work, leaving behind a trail of almost-finished tasks, and every morning Emma quietly finished them.
The cupboard.
The socks.
The light.
The mug.
Again.
And again.
And again.
She’d mentioned it before.
More times than she could count.
“I forgot.”
“I was in a hurry.”
“I’ll do better.”
For a day or two, he usually did.
Then the cupboard would be open again.
The socks would miss the hamper.
The bathroom light would burn all day.
And Emma would clean up the pieces of a life that somehow always seemed to belong to someone else.
She wasn’t angry anymore.
Anger required energy.
This felt more like erosion.
One small thing at a time.
Until she wondered which would give out first—
The cupboard…
Or her.