Chapter 10: The Anniversary
Morning arrived with the same soft light that had filled our bedroom for five years.
Matthew woke first, turned toward me, and smiled the exact smile I had trusted since high school. “Happy anniversary,” he said. I returned the words and the expression he expected. Everything about the day had to look ordinary and warm. Any fracture in the performance would alert him that the trap was no longer invisible to me.
We exchanged gifts after breakfast. I gave him the watch. He opened the box with genuine-seeming surprise and fastened it on his wrist immediately, holding his arm out to admire the way the metal caught the light. He told me it was too much, that I shouldn’t have, that he loved it. I watched his face for any flicker of calculation and found only the practiced warmth I now recognized as part of the long design. In return he gave me a pair of earrings I had once admired in passing. The gesture was perfect. The timing was perfect. Even the memory of me mentioning the earrings felt, in retrospect, like something he might have filed away for later use.
May you like
The rest of the day unfolded according to a quiet script. We walked through the neighborhood where we had grown up. We ate lunch at the small restaurant we had favored since college. We returned home in the late afternoon and spoke about the years behind us as if they still belonged to both of us equally. I matched him sentence for sentence, smile for smile, never allowing the notebook of dates and the photographs of documents to surface in my voice.
When evening came he suggested we open a bottle of the wine we had saved from the wedding. I agreed. I drank little. I needed the clarity more than the comfort.
