Folding her arms tightly across her chest, she wandered from the entryway through the living room and peeked into the office beyond. After visiting the dining room, she stepped into the kitchen and smiled sadly, recalling how they’d flirted and talked about their day while they cooked together. Finally, she went upstairs to their empty bedroom, the guest room, and the room that might have been their child’s if they hadn’t grown apart.
With nothing left to do until Tucker returned with the shampooer, she sat on the bottom step with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms folded around them, staring out the picture window. The weather system that had brought a week of nonstop rain had finally poured itself out. Tattered clouds, tinted with subtle gold by the early afternoon sun, scuttled eastward out of the Puget Sound area. The tide flowed out, leaving pools of reflected sky all across the broad sand spit below the decommissioned ferry dock. She missed her evening walks on the beach with Tucker. Rain or shine, they had taken a stroll after dinner along the rocky shore or the sandy spit if the tide was low or out to the end of the dock if it was high. But it had been a long time since they had maintained that ritual with any regularity.
Abruptly, the front door opened, startling Alicia out of her reveries. She hadn’t heard him pull up.
“Hi, babe,” he greeted as he set the shampooer beside the door. Though he smiled and kissed her cheek, his voice was sad.
“We agreed, remember? No more caresses and no more pet names,” she replied, wishing she could say how much it hurt that she might never hear him call her that again. “It’ll only make this harder than it is.”
“I guess it’s going to take some getting used to.” He glanced around the empty house. “Old habits die hard.”
Together, they walked through the house to make sure they’d left the place as spotless and empty as it had been before Tucker moved in.
“This is wrong,” he said.
Frowning, Alicia turned to him. “What’s wrong?”
He gestured around the vacant living room. “Everything about this.”
“I know it’s not easy,” she said, “but it’s over. Somewhere between you travelling so much for your job and me working so many hours at home for mine, we just… fell out of love.”
He shook his head. “Maybe we didn’t try hard enough.”
“Tucker, we’ve tried. We’ve searched and we’ve fought, but whatever used to be there to fight for is gone.”
For a moment, she thought he was going to argue the point, but instead, he nodded and murmured, “I guess you’re right.”
Disappointment seeped through her, chilled by the finality of his surrender. He turned away and headed back out to his car to grab the box fans, and she shrugged off the regret as she prepared the shampooer. They’d begun the process of filing for divorce, found new places to live, and almost completely moved out of the house they’d shared. What was the point now of holding on to something that was gone?
By the time they’d shampooed the carpets, the sun was setting, and the world outside was awash in crystalline pastels of lavender, peach, and rose. The undulating waves sparkled with the dying light of the sun, and Alicia nearly broke down in tears at the beauty of it.
“Take a walk with me,” Tucker said, joining her on the front steps. “One last stroll for old time’s sake.”
“Sure,” she replied.
The dock was three long blocks from their house, and they walked the distance in silence, not holding hands like they once did. Not touching at all. They paused at the top of the stairs, hesitant and unsure. Should they descend to the beach or race to the end of the dock? How many times had they sprinted down its length, feet pounding on the boards, and found themselves breathlessly caught up in each other’s arms at the end?
Alicia moved toward the stairs but Tucker took a step toward the dock, and they collided, no longer in sync. She turned to him, gazing at a face that had been more familiar than her own reflection for so long, and saw things she hadn’t taken the time to notice. The smile lines around his eyes were deeper than she remembered and there was a regret in his gaze she hadn’t ever seen before. Where was her Tucker who was always laughing, always smiling? When had he become so serious?
“Race me?” he asked, and a flicker of that old humor returned to his face.
Without waiting for her response, he trotted down the dock. Ten yards away, he glanced back over his shoulder at her and winked, challenging her. Shaking her head but grinning, Alicia took off after him, lengthening her stride to catch up. When she finally caught up to him, he was already waiting for her at the end, resting with his hands braced behind him on the railing and his legs crossed at the ankles. Alicia grabbed the railing beside him and leaned out over the water for a few minutes to catch her breath. It felt good, and when she turned around to face the bluff, she was grinning.
“That was fun. Not fair,” she said, “but fun.”
“Yeah, it was. Almost like it used to be before life got in the way.”
Something in his voice made her glance sharply at him. He studied her with a quizzical frown, and she shifted her weight, unsettled by the intensity in his eyes.
“What?” she finally asked.
“I haven’t seen that smile in a long time. I didn’t realize how much I missed it.”
She dropped her gaze, and her smile shifted into something more poignant.
“I guess I missed it, too,” she murmured.
They stood quietly for a long while, staring up at the houses sitting atop the bluff. They looked like a crown of sunset-hued gems, their windows reflecting the fiery sun. She couldn’t remember it ever looking so stunning, and added this moment to her list of things she was going to miss. Time slipped away as the sun disappeared and the colors of sunset darkened into early twilight. Beside her, Tucker pushed off the railing and moved to stand in front of her.
“This is what we missed,” he said. “The simple things we used to love to do together. We let them get lost in the shuffle of bigger things.”
Alicia only nodded and chewed on her lip as tears again threatened.
“Babe, look at me.”
Reluctantly, she met his gaze, and the protest about his use of the pet name died in her throat.