He Came Back Alive ,But I Buried Everything We Had

My sophomore year, my boyfriend threw himself in front of me during a mudslide. The current swept him away. They never found a body.

I cried until I collapsed and ended up hospitalized. The diagnosis was severe depression.

His elderly mother lived alone out in the countryside with no one to look after her, so I dropped out of school and took care of her for three full years.

My classmates all said I was a fool, that I'd thrown away my youth for a dead man.

But I could never forget the look in his eyes the moment he pushed me out of the way. Desperate. And so full of love.

The fourth year, I moved back to the city where we'd first met. I was trying to start over.

That day I'd picked up a delivery gig, dropping off prenatal supplements to a penthouse duplex.

The door was slightly ajar. I was about to knock when a voice drifted out from the inner room. A man's voice. So familiar it shook something loose in my bones.

"Babe, take your supplements later, okay? Don't be upset."

My head snapped up. Through the crack in the door, I saw his face.

…

"Os… Oswald Delgado?"

The door swung all the way open.

He stood in the warm glow of the entryway, dressed in loose loungewear.

I was wearing the blue vest from the delivery app, mud splattered up the legs of my pants from riding a scooter through puddles.

"You spilled the medicine."

He didn't say my name. His voice was flat. Distant.

"If you can't afford to replace the carpet, fine. Just clean it up."

"You don't recognize me?"

I could hear my own voice shaking.

"I'm Denise. Denise Henson."

He didn't even lift his eyes.

"Don't know you."

Behind him, the sound of slippers padding across hardwood. A woman emerged from the inner room, belly round and heavy with pregnancy.

She slipped her arm through Oswald's, casual and possessive.

"Oswald, why haven't you brought my supplements in yet?"

Her gaze drifted past his shoulder and landed on me, standing in the doorway like something the rain dragged in.

"Who's this?"

"The delivery girl. She spilled the medicine."

"Oh."

The woman drew the word out, her eyes sliding over me from head to toe. Her nose wrinkled in disgust.

"Well, make her clean it up then. She got my carpet dirty. There's a rag by the washing machine on the balcony."

She was ordering me around. Like hired help.

I stared at Oswald's face, hard, waiting for him to say something. Anything. An explanation.

He said nothing.

He just stepped aside, clearing the path, gesturing for me to go get the rag.

My legs carried me inside before my mind could catch up.

On the entryway console sat their wedding portrait. The woman leaned into his arms, smiling like she'd won the world.

The date was printed in the bottom right corner. It was taken the second year after I'd dropped out to care for his mother.

At the far end of the living room, the master bedroom door hung half open. An older woman in a nightgown sat in a chaise lounge, peeling cherries and watching TV.

Serena Whitney.

The woman I'd waited on for three years.

Winters, when her arthritis flared, I pressed hot towels to her knees every single night.

She loved sauerkraut fish stew. I made it over twenty times before I got it right, before she finally said it was good enough.

Every time she finished eating, she'd grab my hand and call me her good girl.

"Mom, the delivery girl got the carpet dirty. I told her to wipe it up."

The woman called toward the bedroom.

Serena looked up. Her eyes passed over me.

Three years.

Over a thousand days and nights.

"Hurry it up. Don't go touching things that aren't yours. Country folk never do have any manners."

Her attention swung back to the woman almost instantly. She waved her over, patting the seat beside her, face bright with warmth.

"Wanda Simmons, did the baby move today? Any kicking? Let me tell you, when Oswald was little, he kicked like crazy too…"

I knelt on the floor, dragging the rag across the carpet, scrubbing at the medicine stain over and over.

My knees pressed into the cold tile. Serena's laughter floated out from the bedroom in waves.

Her voice sounded so much stronger than it had three years ago.

Back then, she'd lain on that wooden plank bed in the old house, mumbling the same thing day after day. My son is gone. I don't want to live either.