The yellow cab ride from JFK across the bridge had cost forty-two dollars, and I had tipped the driver ten more just to get home twenty minutes faster. I had spent twelve hours on a flight from Munich, my mind occupied by thoughts of my three-week-old son and my wife. My work as a mechanical engineer often kept me on long overseas shifts, but this time, the distance had felt like an anchor dragging behind me.
The key turned in the lock, but the heavy oak door did not budge because the deadbolt was already thrown from the inside. I leaned my forehead against the cold wood of our Park Slope apartment and listened. Usually, the low hum of the television or the murmur of Maya’s voice would drift through the crack, but the hallway was entirely silent.
I knocked three times, my knuckle striking the brass house number.
“Maya,” I called out, keeping my voice low so I would not wake the baby. “It is David. I caught the early flight.”
A latch clicked inside. The door swung back slowly, revealing my wife standing in the dark.
She was wearing her winter coat over her flannel pajamas. Her right hand was pressed flat against her stomach, right over her surgical incision. She looked at me with dry, hollow eyes, her face pale under the faint light from the exit sign behind me.
“The heat went out yesterday,” she said. Her voice was barely a whisper.
I stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind me. The air inside the apartment was so cold my breath formed a faint white mist. It was freezing, colder than the street outside.
“Where is my mother?” I asked. “Where is Eleanor?”
Maya did not answer. She turned and walked slowly back toward the bedroom, her steps short and guarded, her hand never leaving her side.
I followed her through the dark living room. My boots clicked on the bare hardwood floor. The furniture looked exactly as it had when I left three weeks ago, except for a thick layer of dust on the coffee table.
“She was supposed to stay with you,” I said. “She and Chloe promised they would live here while I was in Germany.”
Maya lay down on the edge of the bed, pulling a heavy wool quilt up to her chin. Her shoulders shook under the layers.
“Click here to read the full story”.
