Liam is in the shower rinsing the shampoo out of his hair when he realizes something is different this morning. Every day it is the same: the movement of his wife beside him rouses him from a deep sleep. Although they keep distance between themselves in the king-sized bed during the night, in the morning she rolls over and wraps her arms around him. If he must start the day, then her warmth, her softness, is the best way to start it.
They lie together like that for a few minutes. He is still half-asleep when she pulls away and gets out of bed, the mattress responding to her movement. He hears her sliding her feet into her slippers, opening the pocket door of their bedroom, then padding down the hall to the kitchen. She swears she tries to be quiet when she is making the coffee, but in truth it is a noisy affair. He hears the rattle of the coffee pot as she fills it with water and places it on the machine. The rustling of the bag as she opens it, measures the coffee beans into the grinder. Twenty seconds or so of grinding. Then the soft shuffle of the ground beans into the filter. Minutes later, the strong scent of coffee wafts down the hallway. He hears her pouring coffee.
Normally, it is this process that lifts him fully from sleep. He doesn’t like the smell of coffee but tolerates it for her. His wife needs her coffee, freely admits it is an addiction, yet a healthy one, she insists. Something about polyphenols. Something about a longer life, better memory, sharper wit. She’s always quoting some new study or another, touting the miraculous benefits of coffee. So be it. Her vices are few. He has a friend whose wife is addicted to painkillers, another to cosmetic interventions that render her sleeker and stranger year by year. As addictions go, coffee seems mild.
In the shower he tries to grab hold of the memory of her rolling over in bed this morning, as she has always done. And he can’t remember it. He realizes he didn’t hear her grinding beans. He didn’t smell coffee. Where is Ava?
This is Chapter 3 of the serial novella By the Time You Read This, an experiment in tiny chapters.
I am publishing chapters as I write them. As usual, I have no outline and plan beyond this: to see where the story takes me. It occurred to me today, I as I was editing Chapter 3 before hitting the publish button, that this may be a sequel to one of my early novels. More on that in a future post. Thank you for coming along for the ride.