Five Minutes

The sheet of paper she held was crisp and white but where her fingers firmly gripped it became moist and soft.

Danielle was in shock. Her eyes did not move, did not blink. They burned as she kept them open yet the stinging sensation in her eyes did not compare to the dull pain in her heart.

Rob was gone. It was simple, as the note explained. Two words scribbled hastily in black ink: Im sorry.

He didn’t bother punctuating it, knowing it wouldn’t matter. The words had enough meaning and anything else added would be deemed unnecessary.

Of course Rob had been acting distant but up until last week things between them seemed to be improving and almost normal.

Just five minutes ago Danielle was unbuttoning her blouse and struggling to get the zipper of her skirt down. Just four minutes ago she was looking into the mirror at her nakedness, trying to see herself through Rob’s eyes. Just three minutes ago she was slipping into her new bikini, readying herself to get into the hot tub with her husband.  Just two minutes ago she walked into the kitchen grabbing two wine glasses with one hand and a bottle of Pinot Noir with the other. And it was just one minute ago when she walked barefoot onto their deck, still damp from this afternoon’s rain, when she slowly set the wine and glasses down on the patio table, and discovered the note.

Rob and Danielle exchanged their vows and love for each other three years ago from today on an unusually cool August evening. They were young. They had been together three years prior to their marriage yet they were still exploring each other as if they had just met yesterday.

They had their ups and they had their downs, what relationship didn’t?

Tonight, Danielle thought, would be different. It would be special. They would bask in their love for each other as they did on their honeymoon, on that clear starry-night sky in Greece, and try to abandon the inconsistencies that sometimes set them apart.

Even though the air was warm goose bumps covered Danielle’s body. She didn’t know whether she even blinked or not, because ever since she picked up that sheet of paper, that paper that would change her for the rest of her life, the words were like fire and she wasn’t able to look away.

Danielle couldn’t hear the incessant song of the crickets surrounding her, or the sound of a family of owls cooing in the distance, or the inviting roar of the jets in the hot tub.

She was alone, alone in the woods of her desolate cabin which served as their home for four years. She didn’t know where Rob disappeared to. She didn’t know why, he had told her he loved her this morning when he served her two slices of fluffy French toast in bed. She didn’t know what to do at this moment, as she stood covered in goose bumps in the dark of the night. Vulnerable. Stunned. Shaken.

Her mind awoke from its coma. She walked over to the hot tub, stepping in one foot at a time. Her hands still gripped the sheet of paper. She was sitting now with her eyes closed. She was afraid outside all by herself. She was always afraid while she was living in this barren strip of land of Pennsylvania. She only felt safe when Rob was home. The only thing she could do was close her eyes, lean her head back against the wall of the tub, and slip into a world far away from the one that abandoned her only five minutes ago.