I heard the garage door go up.
I heard Derek's boots on the mudroom floor, and Lorraine's cane tapping behind him, and the crinkle of a smoothie cup.
"Hey, babe." My husband walked into the kitchen with a smile on his face and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. He smelled like coffee and cold air. "You feeling any better?"
Nine years I had loved that man.
"A little," I said.
"You're crying."
"Onions."
He laughed and squeezed my shoulder, and I felt the warmth of his palm through my sweater, and I understood that I would never again in my life be able to tell whether his touch was tender or was simply the touch of a man checking on his investment.
Lorraine lowered herself into a kitchen chair with an exaggerated sigh. "Oh, that therapist is a tyrant," she said. "I'm exhausted. Nora, dear, would you mind putting the kettle on? I could use my tea."
I looked at my mother-in-law. She was smiling at me.
"Of course, Lorraine," I said. "What would you like for lunch?"
I made grilled cheese sandwiches. I cut Derek's into triangles the way he liked. I smiled and I nodded and I said the right things at the right moments, and I have never in my life given a better performance.
Because for the first time in three weeks, I knew something.
I was not losing my mind.
They were trying to take it.
Let me go back to the beginning. Because the suitcase wasn't the beginning at all. It was only the moment I finally understood where all of it had started.
It started with a passcode.
In nine years of marriage, my husband's phone had never had a passcode.
It used to sit face-up on our kitchen counter like a dog waiting to be fed. Derek would leave it there for hours. If it buzzed, I'd read the text aloud from across the room, and he'd call back, "Tell them I'll call after lunch!" and we never thought twice about it.
That was who we were. That was what I believed my marriage was.
Then, on the evening of Monday, October 5th, Derek's mother moved into our house. And the next morning I noticed that the phone was dark, and his thumb was on it, and he had a look on his face that I couldn't read.
"New passcode?" I asked lightly, pouring my coffee.
"Work stuff." He tucked the phone into his back pocket. "Clients send me their gate codes and alarm numbers. Somebody told me I ought to lock it up."