Forever Yours

Claire woke up to the sunlight peeking through the blinds. She turned over slowly and noticed her husband Tom was already out of bed. A man always on schedule, always on the go. Despite her eyes feeling heavy, she forced herself up from her comfort. She was rested and yet her body felt heavy and stiff. After swinging her legs over the edge, she rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath before standing up.

She crossed over to the windows and pulled the blinds open. Sunlight spilled across the room against the colorful flower vases on her dresser. Though the flowers had already begun to wilt, the vases cast prism-like patterns onto the walls. As she moved through the room, the shifting colors made it feel as though she were walking through a rainbow. But she didn’t notice. Instead, she slipped into autopilot, getting herself ready for another day.

Claire walked down the hallway when she noticed dust gathering on their wedding photo. She wiped it clean before making her way through the living room when she passed dirty dishes on the coffee table and random clothing strewn on the sofa. She grumbled to herself, cursing Tom for his laziness. As always, she gathered up the clothes and threw them into the washer. She stacked each dirty dish on top of each other and carefully carried them to the sink, just as her days as a waitress many years ago.

She stood at the sink, washing dishes while her thoughts drifted from one task to the next – tidying the house, planning dinner, and running errands, including picking up Tom’s suits from the cleaners. Then something moved outside the window. Tilting her head for a better look, she saw Tom sitting on the porch steps with his back to her, facing the backyard. He was on the phone, speaking in a hushed voice.

She assumed he had already left for work, so the sight of him still at home caught her off guard. Worried that he was running late, she knocked loudly on the window to get his attention. He jerked his head toward her and seemed to end the call in a rush. For a brief second, Tom stared at her with an expression she couldn't place. Not of annoyance, but of sadness. Then he shoved the phone into his pocket, rose quickly, and hurried to the garage. Within seconds, he was in his car driving away. Claire shook her head as his car left the driveway, thinking to herself that a wife’s role is never ending.

Claire and Tom met just over a decade earlier while she was waitressing at a 24hr diner. Tom walked in one late night as a newly graduated law student studying for the bar exam. He had a pile of books with him and laid them out on the table in a booth towards the back. His roommates gave him grief for his late night studying, so the diner was the only other option.

Over the next several weeks, Tom became a regular, ordering nothing but bottomless coffee. Claire worked most of those late-night shifts, and on the nights she didn’t, he always asked for her. Their conversations began with light flirtation, childish humor, and sometimes passed silly notes on cocktail napkins. Before long, a quiet and undeniable connection had formed between them. After Tom passed the bar, he mustered enough courage to ask Claire out to dinner to celebrate and then soon after a love affair emerged.

Two years later, during one of her shifts, Tom slipped a crumpled napkin into Claire’s apron pocket. When she fished it out, she found a diamond ring tucked inside with a handwritten note. She said yes almost instantly and threw herself into his arms, drawing a crowd of regulars who burst into applause. Even the hustle of the kitchen ceased long enough for the staff to shout out their congratulations.

Claire, an only child, had been a college freshman when her parents were killed in a car accident. Tom, though newly established as an attorney with a generous salary, was burdened by student loans. Deeply in love and uninterested in an overpriced celebration, they chose instead to mark the occasion quietly, content to keep the moment between themselves. So, just a few short weeks later, they were married at city hall. Simple and personal, just as they intended.

Now years later, although Claire no longer worked, she often felt as though she still did – cleaning up after Tom and bussing his dishes as if she were back at the diner. At times, she missed the restaurant: the conversations with strangers, the rush of the kitchen, and the thrill of meeting new people. As an extrovert, she had once found energy in serving others, even on the hardest days. But when debilitating migraines began to take hold, Tom urged her to quit or at least take a leave of absence.

Tom eventually accepted a position at another firm that doubled his salary, but the promotion came with endless cases and even longer nights. His new income allowed Claire to stay home, yet the tradeoff was steep. In trying to provide for their life together, he was slowly sacrificing their marriage, and with each late night, Claire’s suspicions only deepened.

Every argument ended the same way: Tom insisted on his innocence and swore that he loved her. Claire felt she had little choice but to believe him. In time, the loneliness left by Tom's long hours became difficult to ignore, and Claire often wondered if the future she imagined for them would ever arrive.

When Tom came home later that night, Claire was fast asleep on the sofa. The jingling of his keys jerked her awake. She rubbed her eyes and noticed the moonlight peeking through the windows. Suddenly realizing that she had yet to prepare dinner, she quickly stood, straightened up her clothes and asked him if he wanted her to order some food to go. He stared at her from the foyer with wide eyes, standing silent for a beat before turning on his heels and retreating into his den then locking the door behind him.

Claire hurried after him down the hall. As she passed, she noticed their wedding photo was still dusty, which only sharpened her irritation. She knocked hard on the door, then reached for the knob when he didn’t answer. It wouldn’t budge. Met with silence again, she returned to the sofa and sank down, confused, frustrated, and defeated.

She tried to understand how the day had slipped by so quickly, as if it had vanished in the blink of an eye. She couldn’t even remember whether she had left the house. The dry-cleaning ticket still sat on the table exactly where she'd left it, and Tom’s dirty dishes from the morning remained unwashed in the sink.

As her thoughts spiraled, the room began to spin with them. She dropped her head into her hands, wondering if another migraine had overtaken her and left her sleeping through the afternoon. The medication her neurologist had prescribed often left her feeling hazy, so she eventually blamed the lapse in memory on that.

More than feeling the guilt of a wasted day, Claire resented that Tom had ignored her. She walked to his den and tried the doorknob once more, but it was still locked. With a deep sigh, she gave up and went to bed. She was too drained to start another argument, and she told herself their marriage problems would still be waiting for them tomorrow.

The next morning started just like the previous one. Claire woke up rested but still feeling heavy and stiff. Her brain still foggy from the previous day – or lack thereof. She turned over to see that Tom either never made it to bed or rose early as usual. When she walked over to the windows to open the blinds, the sunlight beamed through the room hitting the flower vases that cast the same prism effect on the walls with its rainbow hues.

After getting dressed, Claire stepped into the hallway and saw that Tom’s den door stood wide open. Hoping the silent treatment was finally over, she entered the living room and found him sprawled face down on the sofa, still wearing yesterday’s suit. As she moved closer, she saw that the side of his face was streaked with dried tears, as though he had been crying through the night. One arm dangled over the edge of the couch, his half-open hand resting near the floor. Beside it lay a crumpled napkin. Claire bent down, picked it up, and carefully smoothed it open. Then she read the handwritten note: “I want to be forever yours. Will you marry me?”

It was the cocktail napkin Tom had used to propose years earlier at the diner. Claire had kept it tucked inside a shoebox with the other napkins with his handwritten notes during their early days together. She had hidden the box from him because he used to tease her about her sentimentality. Now, staring at the note in her hands, she could think of only one question: how had he found it…and why?

She rushed into the bedroom and went straight to her closet. The shoebox had been hidden among the others that held her actual shoes, which meant Tom would have had to open every box to find it. But before she could make sense of that, something else caught her attention. As her gaze swept across the closet, she noticed larger boxes stacked nearby, filled with her clothes. Tom had started packing her things. A surge of panic rose in her chest as she demanded to know why.

When she stormed out of her closet, the dead flowers finally caught her eye as well as the small cards that had fallen on the floor. She picked one up and when she read the note, she was instantly confused.

“So sorry for your loss.”

Shaking her head, she grabbed another one from the floor.

“Our deepest condolences.”

Then another.

“She will be deeply missed.”

She dropped the cards and gasped. Staggering backward, she felt the room spin around her. The rainbow prisms on the walls blurred into a tunnel as fragments of memory began to surface. She remembered one night after an argument with Tom, retreating to bed just as a migraine struck without warning and filled her vision with auras. Then came another memory: Tom accusing her of pretending, of using the pain to escape the fight. Everything else remained locked away, no matter how desperately she tried to remember.

Desperate for something – anything – to jolt her memory, Claire hurried into Tom’s den. As she approached his desk, she saw a newspaper clipping sticking out in a pile of sympathy cards. It was her obituary.

“Claire never met a stranger and made every room brighter simply by entering it.”

Her hands trembled as she continued reading: “She had died in her sleep from an aneurysm.”

The date confirmed it had happened only six weeks earlier. Claire collapsed to the floor, her head falling into her hands. She shook with disbelief at first, then extreme sadness. It felt as though she had spent hours on the den floor, grieving both the life she had lived and the man she had left behind. She carried no regrets, yet guilt still weighed on her. Guilt for all she had not accomplished, and for never having the chance to become a mother. But then suddenly, she remembered her parents and her mood shifted.

She returned to the living room, where Tom was still asleep on the sofa. Kneeling beside him, Claire set the napkin gently on the coffee table. She ran her fingers through his hair, then rested her head against his shoulder. His body shifted, but he did not wake.

Before standing, she kissed his cheek and whispered, “Forever yours.”

With a soft, peaceful smile, she then walked back towards their bedroom and into the sunlight.

And for the first time in weeks, Claire no longer felt heavy.