The mansion had been designed to feel warm despite its size, but now every
hallway seemed unfamiliar. There were new paintings I hadn’t chosen, new rugs, a glass display case filled with luxury watches. The door to our bedroom was closed.
Emma didn’t look at it.
She continued to the blue room.
When she opened the door, my chest tightened.
A narrow bed.
A small dresser.
Two suitcases.
A stack of folded clothes on a chair.
On the nightstand sat a framed photo of us from the year before everything changed. We were standing in front of our first restaurant, both of us younger, thinner, exhausted and happy. Emma had flour on her sleeve because she had been helping in the kitchen that day after our baker called out sick.
Beside the photo was a notebook, a bottle of lotion for cracked skin, and a little ceramic bird I remembered buying her at a roadside market in New Mexico.
