She brushed the rush of emotions out of her mind like crumbs from her hands and thought, “that, as they say, is that.” Her backpack was already in the car, filled with her weekend things and the random effluvia of months of visits. A pair of earrings she’d thought lost, a movie she’d lent that he’d never watched, school pictures of her daughters she thought he’d wanted but that had, instead, slipped under the shuffle of papers in the constant pile on his coffee table – the things he supposedly thought about when she was gone. Now stuffed in the pockets of her bag, her things strained against the zippers as if trying to escape. Like the feelings threatening to burst out of her chest, spilling over her life and burying her alive.

Outside, Daniel trudged back and forth across the lawn, the mower leaving neat and purposeful lines of shorn grass in its wake. Like so much potential, the cuttings already lay dying in the summer sun, shriveling from existence as if they had never tried to grow in the first place. He didn’t see her put the bags in the car. He wouldn’t realize she was gone until he rounded the corner to the front yard and saw his empty driveway.

Inside, the house was quiet. As always, she’d made the bed and straightened the couch. The dishwasher was emptied and refilled and the trash was out. Her chosen chores, the few tasks she’d use to busy herself and somehow justify her existence in his world when no other reason appeared for her being there. She did them each time she was there, almost every weekend. She wondered if he noticed; he never said. His mother visited him once a week to do the same thing, justifying a small niche in his world for herself. Marli loved his mom – a fierce little Italian woman who loved her middle son more than life itself. She ached for all he’d lost in his life, but just like Marli, she had to content herself with loving Daniel from the sidelines, showing her affection for him through the few motherly tasks a 51-yr.-old widower would allow his mother to do. A load or two of laundry, a bit of dusting, fresh sheets on his bed.

Marli’s day had broken earlier, her mind flooded with more emotion than it could hold, in the middle of reading a novel. The main character, upon learning that his 14-yr.-old daughter had been raped, learned that because she’d fought the boy off but had not spoken the word “no,” he could not be successfully prosecuted. Horrified on this father’s behalf, Marli stopped reading and closed her eyes. Disjointed scenes flashed upon her eyelids, as if the TV had popped on and someone was flipping channels between bad movies. Scenes from 30 years ago, then 20 years ago, battled for the screen as she fought to turn the images off. NO. She couldn’t look, wouldn’t watch. She’d never, ever watch a movie like that, not again.