The water began to boil while Dererick looked at me.
I could hear it bubbling in the pot, but neither of us moved to turn it off.
“I saw you wearing gloves in the bedroom,” I said again.
He glanced toward the stove, then back at me.
“When?”
“The other night.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“What were you doing awake?”
It was not the question I had expected.
I had imagined him denying what I saw, laughing it off, or giving me an explanation so ordinary that I would feel foolish for worrying.
I had not imagined that he would ask about me first.
“I wasn't fully asleep,” I said.
He leaned one hand against the counter.
“I thought you were.”
“I know.”
The answer came out more quietly than I intended.
I reached for the stove knob and turned down the heat.
The movement gave me something to do with my hands.
Dererick watched me finish adjusting the flame.
“Why didn't you say something that night?”
I looked at the pot.
“I didn't know what to say.”
“You could have asked me.”
“I know.”
He rubbed his forehead.
For a second, he looked less like the person I had been watching in the dark and more like the tired man who sometimes stood in the kitchen trying to remember why he had opened the refrigerator.
That familiar expression made everything harder.
“I didn't want to assume something,” I said.
“But you thought something was wrong.”
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
He lowered his hand.
“What did you think was wrong?”
I had been afraid of this question for days.
Now that it had arrived, I realized I did not have a clean answer.
“I don't know,” I said. “That's why I'm asking.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he turned off the stove.
The sudden quiet made the kitchen feel different.
“I don't understand,” he said.
“Neither do I.”
He pulled out a chair and sat down.
I remained standing beside the counter.
He looked up at me.
“Come sit.”
I sat opposite him.
The table between us was the same table where we had eaten breakfast that morning.
There were a few crumbs near the edge, and the dish towel lay folded beside the sink.
I found myself noticing those details because I did not know where else to look.
“What exactly did you see?” he asked.
I took a breath.
“You were wearing those pale gloves. The disposable ones.”
He nodded slowly.
“And?”
“You picked up a small black bag.”
“What bag?”
“The one I hadn't seen before.”
He looked down at the table.
I waited for him to say he knew what I meant.
Instead, he asked, “You saw me carry it?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Out of the bedroom.”
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the table.
I watched the movement.
It was a familiar habit, one I had seen countless times when he was thinking.
I wanted to know what he was thinking now.
“Did you follow me?” he asked.
“No.”
“Did you look inside the bag?”
“No.”
“Did you see anything else?”
I shook my head.
He leaned back slightly.
I could not tell whether he was relieved or troubled by my answers.
That uncertainty made me want to fill the silence with every thought I had carried.
I wanted to tell him about the tea.
I wanted to explain why I had started refusing it.
I wanted to confess that I had watched his hands so often that I sometimes forgot to look at his face.
But I had decided to begin with what I knew.
I needed to let the conversation take its own shape.
“Why were you wearing gloves?” I asked.
He looked at me.
For the first time since I had spoken, neither of us seemed to be waiting for the other to ask something.
“I don't know what you're asking me,” he said.
I felt my shoulders tighten.
“You were wearing gloves in our bedroom in the middle of the night. You picked up a bag and left the room. I want to know why.”
He looked away toward the window.
The glass reflected the kitchen light, so I could not see much outside.
“I need to think about how to answer that,” he said.
The words landed heavily between us.
I had expected an explanation, even if it was one I did not believe.
Instead, he had asked for time.
“Okay,” I said.
He looked back at me.
“I'm not trying to avoid you.”
“I didn't say you were.”
“But you think I might be.”
I pressed my palms against my knees.
“I don't know what to think.”
He nodded once.
That was the first answer he had given me that felt entirely honest.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
The pot on the stove had stopped making noise.
Somewhere outside, a car passed along the street.
I could hear the faint ticking of the kitchen clock.
Dererick stood and moved toward the stove.
“Dinner's going to be late,” he said.
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny, but because the ordinary sentence seemed impossible after what we had just discussed.
Then I realized he might be trying to give us both a moment to breathe.
“That's okay,” I said.
He checked the pot and stirred its contents.
I watched him without trying to interpret every movement.
When he asked me to pass him the spoon, I did.
Our fingers touched briefly.
Neither of us pulled away sharply.
We finished cooking.
We sat down and ate, though the conversation remained thin.
He asked whether I wanted more.
I said no.
He cleared his plate and took it to the sink.
I stayed at the table for another minute.
The conversation had not solved anything.
But something had changed.
The question was no longer locked inside my head.
He knew what I had seen.
I knew that he knew.
And neither of us could return to pretending that I had never noticed.
After dinner, I washed the dishes while he dried them.
We worked carefully around each other.
When the last plate was put away, he folded the dish towel and laid it on the counter.
“I'll talk to you about it,” he said.
I looked at him.
“When?”
He seemed to consider the question.
“Soon.”
I wanted to ask him to be more specific.
I wanted to insist that I had already spent too many nights waiting.
But I could hear the strain in his voice, and I did not know what it meant.
“All right,” I said.
He touched my shoulder lightly before leaving the kitchen.
I stood beside the sink after he was gone.
I had wanted to ask him for an answer.
I had finally done it.
Now I had to decide what I would do with the space between asking and knowing.
I turned off the kitchen light and followed him upstairs.
We got ready for bed without discussing the conversation again.
When I lay down, I could still hear his words.
I need to think about how to answer that.
They frightened me because they left so much unknown.
They also gave me something I had not had before.
A conversation that could continue.
I did not know whether the truth would make me feel safer.
I only knew that I could no longer pretend the question did not exist.
Click here to continue reading: PART 14: The Next Morning Looked So Ordinary That I Nearly Let Myself Believe Our Conversation Had Changed Nothing at All
At Two Seventeen, I Watched My Husband Cross Our Bedroom in Gloves, Carrying Something I Had Never Seen Before
Part 13 of 20
