The wife I forgot to love

Camila had lit candles.

That was the first thing Damian noticed when he walked through the door. Two white candles on the dining table and the low warm light of the living room lamp and the smell of something cooking coming from the kitchen. She had music playing. Something soft and French that she had discovered a few weeks ago and played constantly now. The apartment looked the way it always looked when she had decided the evening was going to be a particular kind of evening.

"You are late," she called from the kitchen.

"Sorry." He put his keys down. Took off his jacket. "Work ran over."

He did not mention the detour to the south side of Velmont. He had not decided yet what he would say about that or whether there was anything to say. So he said nothing.

Camila appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing the dark red dress she knew he liked. Her hair was down. She looked polished and warm and deliberately beautiful in the way she often was when she wanted the evening to go a certain way.

"I cooked," she said. "Sit down."

He sat.

She brought out two plates and set them on the table and poured wine without asking and sat across from him with the particular ease of a woman who was comfortable in whatever space she occupied. That had always been one of the things about Camila. She never seemed to need a room to accept her. She just arrived and the room reorganised itself around her.

Damian looked at his plate.

The food looked good. She had made an effort. He could see that.

"It is chicken," she said. "I tried something with herbs. I watched a video." She smiled. "Do not judge it before you taste it."

He picked up his fork.

The first bite was fine. A little heavy on something. Salt maybe. Or one of the herbs was not quite right. He could not immediately identify which one. He chewed and swallowed and told himself it was good because she had made an effort and the effort meant something.

"Well," Camila said, watching him.

"It is good," he said.

She smiled and picked up her fork. "I know it is not what you are used to. I am not exactly a natural in the kitchen." She said it lightly. Self aware and unbothered by it the way she was unbothered by most things. "But I am learning."

"You do not have to learn for me," Damian said.

"I know I do not have to." She looked at him across the table. "I want to."

He nodded. He picked up his wine.

They ate. The French music played softly in the background and the candles threw warm light across the table and from the outside it would have looked like exactly what it was supposed to look like. A couple having a quiet dinner on a Monday evening. Easy. Comfortable. Fine.

Damian ate and said the right things when she said things and asked about her day when the silence stretched and listened to her answer about a difficult client and a lunch that had gone on too long. Camila talked with her hands when she was animated. She always had. She was animated now, describing the lunch, and her hands moved and her eyes were bright and she was beautiful and present and completely here.

He was mostly here.

He cut another piece of chicken.

There was something about the herbs. He kept coming back to it without meaning to. Not because the food was bad. It was fine. It was perfectly fine. It was just that something about the smell of it was doing something in the back of his head that he could not immediately locate or explain. Like trying to remember a word that sits just outside your reach. You know it exists. You cannot find it.

He took another bite. Chewed slowly. The smell was warm and herby and slightly sharp and it reminded him of something without telling him what. Just a feeling. The kind of feeling that does not come with a label attached. He set his fork down for a second and picked up his wine instead.

Camila was talking about something. He tuned back in.

"So I told her that the numbers simply did not support the projection and she looked at me like I had said something personally offensive." Camila shook her head with a small laugh. "Some people treat their own optimism like a personality trait."

"What did she say," Damian asked.

"Nothing useful." Camila waved a hand. "It will sort itself out. It always does." She looked at him across the candlelight. "You are quiet tonight."

"I am listening," he said.

"You are somewhere else," she said. Not accusing. Just observing. Camila observed things accurately. It was one of the things about her that had always been true.

"Long day," he said again.

She accepted that. She reached across the table and touched his hand briefly and then picked up her fork again and kept talking and he kept listening and the evening moved forward the way evenings do.

"Are you okay," Camila said.

He looked up. "Yes. Sorry. Long day."

"You said." She looked at him for a moment with those steady eyes. "Where did you go after the office. You were not on the usual route when I tracked your location."

"I had to stop somewhere," he said. "Errand."

She looked at him for one second longer than the answer required. Then she picked up her wine. "Okay."

He knew that okay. It meant she had filed the information somewhere and would come back to it later. Camila did not push in the moment. She stored things. It was one of the differences he had noticed gradually between her and. He stopped that thought before it finished itself.

He ate the rest of the meal.

After dinner she curled up against him on the couch and they watched something she had been following for weeks and she laughed at the parts that were funny and made comments about the characters and he sat there with her weight against his side and his arm around her and watched the screen.

He was fine.

He was completely fine.

Later when the apartment was quiet and Camila was asleep beside him he lay in the dark looking at the ceiling. He was not thinking about anything in particular. He was just awake in the way you are sometimes awake when your body has decided that sleep is not yet available.

The candles were out. The French music was off. The apartment was dark and quiet and still.

He thought briefly about the car park. About the way Helena had said goodnight and turned and walked away without once looking back. Like she already knew she would not need to.

He turned over.

He went to sleep.

In the morning Camila was up before him for once. He could hear her in the kitchen. He lay there for a moment in the half-awake quiet and breathed and got up.

The kitchen smelled faintly of last night's cooking. Herbs and oil and something lingering on the air that he still could not quite name.

He poured himself coffee and stood at the window and looked at the city and did not think about anything in particular.

Or he told himself that.

Which, lately, had stopped being quite the same thing.