Steamed rolled from the dish. Humming softly, Rachel pulled it from the oven and set it on the counter to cool. The timing seemed wrong for such a cheerful mood, but she wouldn’t push the blessed happiness away. The humming kept her mind intact.
Keys tinkled outside the front door. In the death of winter, the door was badly swollen, retching and dragging in protest before flying open, dragging a stumbling Kyle with it. “Damned door,” he muttered. He regained his balance, kissed her cheek, and followed her into the kitchen.“I missed you.” When she failed to reply, inattentive, “There was a babe promoted to my office today,” he grinned.
Rachel glared, and Kyle returned a smile, and in that moment, they were happy. It was temporarily comforting, eased the ache that haunted their every moment together, and they shared it, and it was gone.
Rachel twisted her body to take the pie from the counter and smiled. “Chicken pie,” she moved too quickly. The dish swept to the tile floor and shattered. Rachel flushed red. “It used to be her favorite,” she muttered, bending awkwardly to scoop up the larger pieces. Her fine hair slipped out of the clip, draped across the right side of her face and went ignored.
“Rachel, don’t do this. Oh for Christ’s sake,” Kyle moaned, in a voice not quite like exasperation, and turned away from her.
“I’m sorry! I’m… It’s not like I try!” She was hurt and defensive, choking down sobs with a biting tone.
Kyle raised his voice. “It’s been a year!” Stunned, Rachel dropped to her butt in a completely ungraceful motion and sat there, still. After a moment she pulled her legs into her chest. She looks quite small this way, like a child, like… Kyle thought. Silence triumphed as so many times before. What words were there, that could erase what had happened between them, to them?
He crouched next to her and softened. There had been too many fights already, agonizingly putting more distance between each other, all they had left.“It’s been a year.” He took Rachel by the waist and pulled her to her feet.
“A year today,” Rachel murmured. “What were we doing, this moment a year ago, Kyle?” He pulled her to him.
“Rachel, she’s gone.” Her face was white. “No more of this.” They stood in silence like that for a long time, picked up the mess, and skipped dinner.

Rachel lay, eyes peeled open, in bed, pressed tightly against Kyle. She felt his steady breath on her neck, but it didn’t comfort her. 11:11, smirked the clock. Make a wish? The notion was disconcerting. She fidgeted slightly, and heard Kyle’s lungs lose their rhythm as he stirred.“Rach, do you want me to get you something to put you to sleep? You need it tonight, I think,” the voice asked cautiously, distant, drowsy. He might have taken something himself, Rachel thought, offhandedly.
“Just dozing off,” she said dreamily, and as an afterthought, “I love you, Kyle,” It would put him at ease.
“I love you too,” Rachel lay still and regulated her breathing so Kyle would think she had finally drifted off. She hadn’t. The clock changed; the opportunity to wish something away, lost.
Eventually, she forced her eyes shut, which only served to make the house louder.
The house made noises at night, with no explanation, but the sounds it created weren’t something to fear. Rachel usually found the sound of the centuries old house going to sleep rather soothing. Tonight, at every creak, bang, hum, each muscle tensed. The cat at the end of the bed purred with each release of its breath. He and Kyle were in unison, Rachel noticed with a spurt of insane amusement she could not explain.
Time passed. 11:32. The red lights of the clock shifted position, moments before a wave of intense emotion Rachel could not describe moved through her, starting in her chest and stomach, and spreading, cold and unsettling.
There was crying in the next room, the wails of an infant, struggling to fill its tiny lungs and scream at the same time.
The other sounds of the house died quickly. The screaming filled every corner, and hung in every drop of air. She breathed it when she inhaled, heard it as it filled her ears, pushing down past her eardrums, drilling into her head, burying itself deep inside her. Rachel did not blink, did not stir. It was as if it carried in her bloodstream. She could feel the screams in her limbs. They became louder. Pressure built in her head. It was unbearable, building. Any moment now her head would burst. Seconds passed. Clear and sharp it pushed through the wall, and it was in her, pushing to get out. She was in agony, wasn’t she? Louder. Stronger.
Gone. All was silent. There were no creaks, no groans of an old house struggling to support its own weight. No cries.
What felt like several minutes but was in fact no more than several seconds passed in utter, deafening silence before Rachel become focused enough to question her own reality. When a phrase, a comment, an action, an incident - an accident, has been so utterly erased, leaving no evidence, and is denied to every extent, how can the individual mind be expected to maintain the illusion that the thing occurred? It must be accepted as a lack in judgment, an error, a crossing of the mental wires. Though the thing may have happened, who is to say, if no one saw and there is no trace? Accept it did not happen, or accept your own insanity, yet Rachel did not doubt her sanity.
A tree falls in the forest. Does it make a sound if no one is there to hear it?
A baby screams in the night. Did it really cry out if the baby is dead? Rachel wondered absurdly. Indeed, a grim smile haunted her lips.She had often woken at this time of night, came as an afterthought.
Yes, Rachel felt quite calm. It was though it had never happened. Well, she supposed it hadn’t.
Yet, if she had believed she had heard such a thing, then she supposed it was like physical pain. She remembered her broken ankle when she had fallen on the slick-with-ice walkway that time a few years ago. As she’d been sitting on the walkway, struggling not to cry out, the shooting, stabbing pain was all too real, all too poignant. It crossed her mind to wonder how this kind of agony would ever be forgotten, how it could ever end.
And a few hours later, woozy on pain meds, ankle cast, it was gone and erased. The pain was no longer felt, her body no longer pleaded to end it, because it was no longer relevant. She couldn’t precisely remember, even at that moment, why the broken ankle had been so terrible in the first place. It is the kind of memory the mind doesn’t seem to be able to keep intact. It is hazy, at best.
Yes, if it had happened, it would have been a memory like pain, which isn’t exactly a memory at all. But it had, of course, been only her overtired mind. It’s been a year. It is done. The words had never given comfort before, and they did no better now, but her heart was not strained. For the first time that night, she was able to close her eyes. Her body was relaxed, and what a moment ago had been so utterly chilling, a thing the senses take in and fail to process, that strikes a chord far below passionate love, below pure hatred and deep sorrow, and rips down the door to the inner circle of the soul, was now nothing more than her own active imagination.
That particular door neatly reattached, the house frozen still, Rachel slipped into dreams she would not remember when she woke.

Rachel’s eyelids slid open earlier than usual the next morning. Through the blinds, the sun was barely up and piercing. As she stared, a drop of rain splattered against the glass, though the sky had never been more spotless. It hung for a moment, gripping the window, then shuddered and slid downward until it collided with the wooden pane and broke apart.
Propped on her elbows, she looked at Kyle, eyes firmly shut, taking slow breaths. She loved him, she knew, she wouldn’t make it if she lost him.

Pushing the haunting hours of yesterday behind, her feet dropped to the frigid floor.It was typical February; sunny and inviting at a glance, freezing and imposing to the touch. It occurred to her that the forgotten droplet may have been the remnants of a frost.
The damned slippers were gone again. It was one of those things she was constantly moving from place to place, always thinking she’d remember where they were, but when she really needed them, the memory couldn’t be further from the mind.
Each step down the staircase chilled Rachel’s feet less as they became number to the cold. I just really need some coffee. She shuffled through the biting air in the living room to the kitchen, where the chicken pie dish lay, unwashed, in the sink. Ignoring its presence, heavy in the room, Rachel put on a large pot of coffee, and for the first time that morning, turned to sit at the kitchen table.

There was no shock, no disbelief at what she saw, only a sharp and near physically disabling pang that shot through her gut. The room was still and ordinary. In fact, the jar of peach flavored baby yogurt that sat on the far end of the table would have looked completely in place with the suburban kitchen setting if it hadn’t been the only thing there, aside from the small plastic spoon. The same one, she knew, they had used to shovel food into Ashlen’s mouth, and the same one she knew Kyle had thrown out in a rage, along with many others of Ashlen’s former belongings, the day she died.

The sick feeling swam around Rachel’s stomach, strong enough for her hand, unbidden, to brace her body against the counter. She was sweating but her blood ran cold as she forced her left foot forward.

In a moment she couldn’t recall, Rachel was at the table, and in the next, she was slumped in the opposite chair. She felt she must be losing her grip on her surroundings, the impossibility of this reality made her, for the first time, fear for her sanity, that she was out of phase with the life she had struggled to regain.

It was only after the initial, unreasonable, yet gripping fear that the pain set in around her heart. Whatever world she was living in, this was a jabbing reminder of that which she has tried so hard to forget, each and every day.

Riddled with terrible emotions she couldn’t describe, Rachel snapped herself back to the reality of the cold kitchen, the beautiful day to come, and the creaking of Kyle’s footsteps on the front stairs. She would not allow him to see this. It would be her own unsettling burden. With the speed of unreasonable panic, she was at the sink in no more than a few seconds, where the kerr-plop of the lumps of yogurt as they hit the stainless steel sink assured her they were real. The yogurt washed down through the pipes, the glass container and plastic spoon buried in the depths of the garbage can, Rachel, sweat freezing against her skin, turned to face the door.

“’Mornin’, babe,” Kyle padded into the room, his own slippers snugly on his feet. She struggled to get out something to greet him, to act as though nothing had happened, but she felt her throat was constricting. Realizing momentarily that she wasn’t breathing, she forced herself to exhale without gasping. It came out as a whistle anyway, drawing a glance.

“Are you alright?” He laughed. His laughter, usually a happy sound, had never made her feel more uncomfortable. With her back to the counter, her hand still lay on the sliding cabinet that held the garbage bin that held the jar and long ago discarded plastic spoon in its bowels. They were evidence, and they would betray her to Kyle, betray what she knew. What did she know?

This was absurd! She had always trusted her husband with everything that she held close to her, every secret, every burden, and this was when she needed him most, yet she had never felt further from him. What held her back? Lingering, somewhere in the back of her mind, was the nagging idea that Kyle had betrayed her, that he was taunting her. There was nothing less likely, yet it had surely not been her to lay the jar out. She knew she did not doubt Kyle, but only her own grip on the few telltale minutes; if what she thought was truth, really was. She would not risk his opinion of her on such a volatile thing, and yet, her heart still raced. The brief memory of what had, (or had not, she reminded herself) happened the night before danced in her mind.

Rachel had no explanation, and from the moment she realized she could not explain it, her mind darkened it. Playing it through, her consciousness battling against her subconscious desire to forget, she watched the peachy orange mush turn to gray behind her eyelids, felt the exact location of the plastic spoon become lost to her, and then the whole incident turn fuzzy. It had happened, she was very sure, but she herself had erased the details of the incident that made it so believable, yet so completely impossible; she had blurred the lines and left the memories as one leaves the smudges of an erased pencil mark. Aware that this phasad would crumble if she pushed her fragile mind too far, she asked Kyle to take the garbage out, and did not allow it to cling to her memory any longer.

They went out that night, to walk the main road of their small town under the streetlights. On Saturday nights like these, this was the only place to be for residents, dining at the small Italian bistro, Antonio’s, and seeing a late movie in the three theatre cinema. The walk was short and pleasant from the restaurant to the theatre, pattering over the neatly laid cobblestone sidewalk and slipping from one perfect circle of light cast on the path from above to the next. Rachel had often thought of how picturesque the whole thing was, that it could be from an old movie. It had drained of all its beauty, along with the rest of the world, a year and a day ago.

As Rachel nodded and smiled at Kyle, intent on her ravioli, Kyle commented on how much better she seemed than yesterday.

There were a relatively large number of people on the walk that night. They passed an adoring couple, holding hands, smiling eyes, or the occasional loner, every few seconds. Kyle talked about work (Rachel vaguely remembered a story involving the nerd of his office knocking over the water cooler,) as she placed one foot neatly in front of the other in the rectangular stones. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back!

The sun was long down and the sign read “Closed,” but the owner of the bakery still moved around inside, sweeping. Kyle grabbed her arm, “I’m still hungry,” and rapped on the darkened window. Once the man had flipped on the light and allowed him inside, Rachel sat on the step. Her legs felt weak.

The navy blue stroller was pushed at an awkwardly slow rate by a woman in a light pink sundress, insanity for the Maine February, that struck a note of familiarity in Rachel. Her head was turned and bent away, so that her near black, dead hair obscured her face from Rachel’s view. She was young, not more than twenty five, yet old in her own way. Rachel could not take her eyes away, even as others on the sidewalk milled around the woman, too close for comfort, it seemed. The further she advanced, almost gliding along the stones, the clearer Rachel could hear the sobs. Louder than sobs, the woman was wailing, a hand to her face, and the other’s fingertips barely brushing the stroller, gently and patiently urging it along. It was a wonder to Rachel that no others had taken notice of the young woman, sticking out like a sore thumb in her attire and making such a racquet.

When she was no more than three feet away, the uncomfortable feeling of passing an old acquaintance one pretends not to recognize made her shift on the stair, and the woman stopped. Rachel stiffened as she stepped in front of the stroller and approached her, her crying stifled. Head still turned, she whispered, voice low and hurried,
“Have you seen? Have you seen what I’ve done?”

Rachel opened her mouth, to say what, she did not know, and no words came out. Her mouth simply hung open like a marionette without a master. “Look!” Her hand motioned towards the covered stroller and she turned to face it. Rachel shook her head slowly, but the woman was no longer watching her. Where was Kyle?“See what I have done.” It came out cold, a demand; one Rachel could not resist. She stood and took a single stride to look into the stroller. It was lined with a white blanket dotted with small purple elephants. It was Ashlen’s, and it was soaked through with blood.

Rachel screamed but heard nothing, and then she was stumbling, and then she crashed into Kyle, and he was shaking her. People all along the walk had stopped and were staring. She was sobbing into his chest, screaming for him to look. Kyle was distraught, could find nothing out of the ordinary. He looked to a bystander for answers, and they only shrugged. “Rachel! Rachel! Rachel, what happened?”

“Look at her! Oh God, look in the stroller, that woman,” Rachel wasn’t crying, she was gasping and shaking Kyle. “Something is so wrong, Kyle! Oh, God,” she was too panicked for him to even try to get through to her, aside from the fact that he was absolutely terrified. What was happening to his wife?

Somehow, they managed to get home.

At some point on the car ride home, Rachel’s hysteria turned to complete and total silence. It was a silence so final and impenetrable that when Kyle opened his mouth to break it, he found his throat dry, and unable to construct the simplest of sentences to destroy it. Yet its destruction seemed somehow crucial to him. After several futile attempts, he directed his attention to fighting the urge to take Rachel to the hospital, and drove her home instead.

Now, Rachel lay on her side on the couch, legs curled into the fetal position. Her eyes were snapped open and she blinked mechanically, every four or five seconds. Her head lay on Kyle’s lap. The only thing that reassured him she was alive was the insane, uncoordinated pounding of her heart, so loud he could feel it pulsate through her, into the hand he held, and into his own aching chest.

Tears came. They were so close, hell, he could feel her heart beat, and she couldn’t have been further away. This was not the woman he had married. A drop slipped off his chin and splashed onto Rachel’s cheek.

“Please, Rachel. Please talk to me. I love you, I want to help. I, I don’t know what to do.” His words came out slow. He was begging. Minutes slid by in desperate silence and Kyle cried silently.

Rachel whispered slowly, “Kyle, it’s alright. I’m alright. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for all this,” and squeezed his hand, but did not move.

Fear mixed with the wash of relief Kyle felt hearing her speak calmly came out as choking sobs. “You’re not, Rachel you’re not,” as desperately as he wanted to believe it, he could not. “Rachel, I saw you last night. I, I heard you get up.”

Rachel laughed. It was a soft and pretty laugh.“What did you see me do?”

She asked as if she truly did not know. Kyle asked himself if he was sure, and hesitantly continued, “I, I saw you put out Ashlen’s old food on the table and, and her spoon.” The sobs welled back up in his throat. “Where have you been keeping that, Rachel?” She did not reply, “And, and it was gone in the morning. I’m scared for you, I, I love you.”

Rachel stirred, turned over and looked up into Kyle’s eyes, and he knew that for the first time since it happened, she was at peace. There was a calmness pooling in her eyes he barely recognized, and it relaxed him. His eyes began to dry. “Kyle, I’m okay now. I just want to stay here a little longer. I understand… so much more now. Go to bed and I’ll be up in a minute.” She let her lips twitch into a smile and put her hand to his face. “Really, I’m okay.”

“I’m not leaving you, Rachel.” She laughed quietly again.

“It’s just upstairs, babe. I just need to get my thoughts together for a while.” The smile widened. “I love you.” Kyle turned his face away from her, eyes moving quickly. Rachel propped herself up and used her hand to turn his face back toward hers. She kissed him. “I’ll be up soon.” After a moment’s hesitation, Kyle slowly stood up and creaked across the worn floor and slowly up the staircase.

Rachel sighed a deep sigh of content relief, and readjusted herself into the position she had lain in before, with a pillow in place of Kyle’s lap. Her heart had slowed back into a steady thump.

She could have laid there for hours, watching Ashlen play quietly on the floor. The infant smiled up at her and cooed for her mother. For the first time in a year, Rachel was happy.