Congratulations on Figuring Out Who's Been Stealing All the Pudding Cups!

For on four weeks now tragedy has beset your noble twenty-four hour Safeway, located at the junction of Caesar Chavez Boulevard and Powell Street. Each night, during the 2 AM delivery that ensures proper distribution of foodstuffs for your non-meth addicted customers in the day to come, all of the pudding cups you ordered have gone missing.

At first you thought it might be a clerical error, maybe an issue at the distribution plant. But despite your phone calls the issue persisted, and the manifest showed, time and time again, that the truck had been loaded with more than enough pudding cups to make up for the previous night’s lack. At this point, thousands of dollars worth of pudding cups have gone missing, time and time again, without any sign of perfidy or foul play. Different drivers have made the deliveries, each shipment has been unloaded by a constantly rotating cast of night shift workers, but regardless of who is supposed to be responsible for the pudding shipment, it has gone missing each and every time to date.

There’s been no pattern to be found, no evidence whatsoever. The pudding simply vanishes at some point between being unloaded from the truck and being stocked on the shelves of Safeway. It’s been a plague upon your otherwise orderly store for far too long, and corporate has been getting on your back about it of late as letters from customers (really just one customer, but she writes from a bunch of names and normally buys an astounding number of pudding cups) pour in.

But today you’re going to catch a lucky break. When the shipment vanishes right under your god damn nose at 2 in the god damn morning you’re going to say fuck it and drive home to rethink your entire life, leaving your assistant manager, Jorgina (her parents didn’t understand how Spanish worked) to watch over the store in your absence.

When you arrive home you’ll see that the garage door will already be open. Your wife’s car will be backed up to it, the trunk hanging open, cardboard boxes veritably cascading out of the back of her SUV. When you pull into the drive way next to her you’ll catch her pulling one of the boxes out and your eyes will meet and in that moment you’ll know exactly who’s been stealing all of your pudding cups.

You’ll step out of your Honda wordlessly and walk around it and into the garage for the first time in months. Inside there will be cardboard boxes of pudding stacked nearly to the ceiling, a virtual lifetime supply of pudding just waiting to be crammed on to the shelves of Safeway. You’ll be taking in the sheer spectacle of it when your wife approaches you from behind and wraps her arms around your shoulders, letting her weight hang down across your frame.

“Hey there honey,” she’ll murmur. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

You’ll open your mouth to respond, but then you’ll think, really think, about the last time you actually saw your wife awake. The two of you will both have been working so hard, plying your trade at off hours and missing each other at mealtime that the last moment you’ll be able to recall together will be your vacation six months earlier, when the two of you went camping up in the Gorge.

So instead of accusing her, of unleashing rage you’ll simply let it go, wrap your arm around her and pull her close for a kiss and whisper back.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Congratulations on Figuring Out Who’s Been Stealing All the Pudding Cups!