Congratulations on Cooking Some Amazing Biscuits and Gravy!

It’s Thursday, January 22 three days before your anniversary and you’ve woken up early to cook your wife a delicious surprise breakfast.

Normally she gets up at 6 AM to get to her job early, so you had to get up at around 4:30 to get the sausage started, but it’s smelling really good. By the time you hear the shower running you’ll have just put the finishing touches on the gravy and it’ll be cooking down. The biscuits will be plumping in the oven and the eggs will be frying up just the way she likes them.

By the time she gets downstairs you’ll have a pair of elegant place settings on the table and all of her favorite breakfast dishes carefully arranged. You even got some of her favorite flowers, chrysanthemums, for a centerpiece.

It will be absolutely perfect. Which is why her panicked expression will seem so out of place.

You’ll do your best to ignore it, sliding up to her and holding her, saying “Call in sick today.” But she’ll just stand there, unblinking. When you move to kiss her she’ll pull away.

You’ll stand there looking at her, puzzled.

“Happy early anniversary,” you’ll say.

She won’t say anything in response, but you’ve been married to this woman for almost a decade now. You’ll know exactly what she’s thinking. It’s just two words: oh shit.

When a light knock sounds on your door you’ll feel like your stomach dropped out. It’ll be like you were hit right in the solar plexus. You’ll have trouble breathing. You’ll want to sit down, but you’re afraid you’ll vomit.

Your wife won’t say she’s sorry. She won’t even get her coat, she’ll just run out the door in her work clothes. You’ll catch sight of a man through the jamb, but it will barely last a second.

The way she’s been over the last few months will all make sense now. The early mornings, the late nights, the increase in her smoking. You should’ve seen the signs, but you’ve been so busy yourself.

And now that you know she’s left with an ultimatum. You don’t know anything about him, if he matters to her, if she loves him more than you. You just know that she’s scared.

She’s so scared she ran out of your house. Because she’s worried about how you’d react. So she still feels something for you.

You try to take comfort in that fact as you sit there, delicately moving tiny portions of your special anniversary breakfast on to your plate.

As you shovel the biscuits coated in gravy into your mouth they taste like ashes. You swallow the mouthful, with effort, then shove your plate away.

The taste is just a physical manifestation of your grief, because the food you made is possibly the most delicious in the world at that moment. Sorry that this is how you found out. It’s not the worst way it could’ve happened, but it is pretty close.

And congratulations on cooking some amazing biscuits and gravy. And seriously, we’re really sorry.