culptures. My parents were artists, loving but perpetually distracted. His house was quiet, meticulously clean, run by a single mother, Mrs. Thompson, who worked tw

. And David, he was my anchor. He was the calm in my family's storm. He would climb the fence to do homework with me, t

sitting on his porch swing, when he took my hand and it just felt right. We were married at twenty-two, under that old oak tree in his mother's backyard, surrounde

the name Chloe Davis,

dinner one night, about six months ago. "She's ambitious, w

ive her a bre

r care, put herself through college. She's got a lot of fight in her." He sounded impressed, a little... patern

don't know what I'd do without Chloe." He started staying later at the office, having "working dinners" with her. He said

alked up to David, straightened his tie, and handed him a glass of whiskey, neat, just the way he liked it. "You lo

e later. "What wa

used. "She was just being helpfu

the accident. It was his mother's 65th birthday. We were supposed t

r. Finally, on the thirteenth try, a breat

er voice smooth as silk. "We're in a v

ear the distinct sound of clinking glasses and

ailable," she said, a

ine, I was waiting for him. We had the worst fight of our marriage. I screamed, I cried,

ah! You're strangling me!" he y

ospital. Now, sitting alone in my car outside that same hospital, the memory of that fig