Tiny Little Fractures

Two

Naturally, I was suspect number one when Jon went missing, but I had an alibi. Jon decided that I was going to pay double hard for backing out on my promise. So he called my mother on his way to the charity ball and told her I was too sick to go. My mom jumped right into her car and came over to inflict her own unique form of babying torture. The exact moment that Jon was taken from a grocery store parking lot, I was complaining about having to eat my mother’s homemade kale and bean soup.

Every day that he was gone the hope of his return had dwindled until it faded into nothing but a dull reminder at the back of my mind. It popped up during ridiculous songs on the radio, the realization that his pillow didn’t smell like him anymore, and every time I was forced to eat that horrid kale soup.

He was gone, they said. There was no more hope. He was never pronounced dead, but his parents had wanted closure. So they had a little fake funeral with a little fake gravestone that bore his name. They had a preacher talk about his memory and how he was a loving husband and son. The coffin was empty beside him. There was no Jon. His real body was somewhere else. No one knew for certain.

I held onto the little bits of hope even after that. I developed a habit of searching faces in the crowds and in the background on TV. I listened carefully to the voices on the radio, just having this tiny glimmer of hope that one day I would see him walking down the street in the background of a news broadcast. Maybe someday I would hear his voice on the radio, winning some concert tickets or the lottery or something.

One day I woke up and started my day just like every other day. I took my time making coffee in the morning, I had a shower as I waited for it to brew, I put it in a plastic cup and drove to the middle school where I taught seventh-grade history. It wasn’t until I was already there that it dawned on me. I had just happened to glance at the clock at precisely 11:11 AM as I waited for the late bell to ring.

“Make a wish,” I had muttered to myself.

It was a stupid thing Jon, and I used to talk about when we were kids. He heard that double numbers meant something and 11:11 was reserved for making wishes. Sometimes late at night we would sneak out and meet each other at exactly 11:11 to make wishes for our future. Even as adults he would whisper his dreams into my ear on late nights if he happened to catch the clock in time.

That was when I realized a whole year had passed since Jon had disappeared. I’d become used to not having him around. I still thought of him constantly. I would never forget. It still hurt more than anything I could ever put into words. But I had already come to the conclusion that he was never coming home. I did it without realizing it. I kept his things for no reason. I searched faces out of habit, not real hope.

I won’t lie and say I never cried. I cried when he didn’t come home. I sobbed like a baby for a week straight after they had given up the search and his parents informed me of the fake funeral plans. Then one day it was over. I stopped crying. It wasn’t anything dramatic or romanticized, like my tears all dried up or anything like that. My reason was actually relatively simple. I’d experienced the worst, what else could the world throw at me? I’d lost my husband. There was nothing left to hurt me.

Even though I never cried anymore, it didn’t mean the tears weren’t still there. I could always feel them threatening to come back again. I usually won the fight with them because I knew crying wouldn’t do me any good. They were nothing more than leaking eye sockets to indicate pain to a bystander, or maybe relieve some kind of built up pressure. There was so much pressure in my body that I could feel the tears always waiting for the trigger to set me off. I could feel the fractures growing bigger and bigger every day. I never broke. I knew that I could shatter at any second. I just didn’t have a reason to.

Not yet.