The rain had stopped, but the street still carried it—each passing car pulling a silver wake behind its tires. Marisol watched from the doorway, counting the seconds between headlights, and decided that tonight, finally, she would tell him.
She had rehearsed the words so many times they had gone smooth, like sea glass, and she no longer trusted them. What she needed was the ordinary version—the one that sounded like her, the one she could say while taking his coat.
Inside, the kettle had gone quiet. Whatever warmth the kitchen still held was borrowed from earlier in the evening, and it was leaving through the window she had never fixed. She thought of the winter he taped the frame with newspaper, how the pages yellowed slowly through February, headlines fading like everything else they postponed.
A bus went past, empty and bright as an aquarium. Somewhere above her a neighbour closed a curtain, and the square of light on the wet pavement folded itself away. Marisol let the door click shut behind her and stood on the top step, rehearsing nothing now.
The street smelled of rain and engines. Three headlights. Two. One.