I returned to the window, pressing my forehead against the glass like the physical proximity might somehow summon him.
The sun was beginning its descent toward the horizon, casting longer shadows across my lawn.
The silence in my house began changing quality. It stopped feeling peaceful and anticipatory. Now it felt suffocating, pressing in from all sides.
The fear of being forgotten is a particular kind of cold. It starts in your stomach and spreads outward to your fingertips and toes. It’s the fear that you’re standing there in your best clothes, wearing perfume, heart open and vulnerable, and the person you’re waiting for hasn’t thought about you even once.
I checked my phone’s volume settings irrationally, as if I might have somehow missed a call.
No. The ringer was turned all the way up. The screen showed no missed notifications.
“Traffic,” I said aloud, forcing optimism into my voice and catching my reflection in the dark television screen. “It has to be traffic.”
Naples traffic during tourist season is legitimately terrible. If there was an accident on US 41 or construction near Fifth Avenue South, he could easily be stuck in gridlock with no way to call safely.
He’s probably stressed right now, I told myself. Gripping the steering wheel. Checking the dashboard clock. Frustrated that he’s running late.
He’s a careful driver. He wouldn’t text and drive just to send an update.
I refused to sit down because sitting down would mean admitting he was late. Standing by the window meant I was simply ready and waiting, patient and understanding.
A dark car slowed in front of my house.
My entire body went tense with hope.
I grabbed my purse from the hall table.
But the car accelerated and kept driving past.
My hand dropped slowly back to my side.
Four-twenty.
“He’s coming,” I insisted to the empty room, but my voice sounded smaller now, less certain.
He promised. He wouldn’t break a promise on Mother’s Day. Not my Louis.
I turned away from the window and walked to the kitchen, throat suddenly dry. I poured myself a glass of water and drank it standing at the sink, watching my own hands shake slightly.
I wouldn’t let doubt poison this day. I wouldn’t let past disappointments ruin present hope.
It was just traffic. Just the chaos of a holiday weekend. Just the normal complications of life.
He was coming. He had to be coming.
I set the glass down and returned to my post by the window.
But with every minute that passed, with every car that wasn’t his, the certainty I’d been clinging to began developing cracks.
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