The Real Mrs. Davenport
by Jena Vallina
They never tell you how difficult grocery shopping is. After the fact, that is.
The first reason is the couples. Couples love grocery stores. She sees them everywhere, even more so now that she is actively trying not to look. Adoring eyes. Those tiny gestures that spell comfortable lived-in intimacy, a finger brush of the wrist or the small of the back.
She had that once but can no longer feel it, the instinctive touch of hands on her not for any purpose but the simple yearning to know that someone is there. Physical sensations are flaky that way. It is a double-sided coin, truth be told. On one hand, you forget even the worst pain after it ebbs away. But a kind and gentle touch? Once gone, it is irretrievable, left to the world of mismatched socks and too-big Tupperware lids. You are left wondering if you had ever felt something in the first place, or if maybe it was all in your head.
The second, and more practical reason which as of recent has begun to bug her even more, is the portions. Irene was used to shopping for two. Adam was never a huge eater like some other men she had dated, but he liked having something to nibble on while working long nights in the lab. She’d buy the super-sized pretzels, reading the labels to check the sodium content. Heart disease ran in his family.
Maybe if she had been more domestic. Cooked more meals for him. But he never wanted a housewife. Adam liked career women. Such a funny phrase. Kind of an oxymoron. Sure, you can have a career and be a woman, but will you ever be a good woman in your husband’s eyes? Don’t be absurd.
“Irene?”
But there’s also a third reason why grocery shopping is the worst. Because when you are feeling your worst, when you are looking your most unpresentable, it is a scientific fact that your chance of running into the one person you would least wish to see increases tenfold.
She’s a lovely young thing, her husband’s new wife, and even in the unforgiving fluorescent light of the produce aisle her skin glows and her eyes sparkle. Iris. A name so close to hers it was almost humorous. Like phonetic incest. So typical of Adam, to replace her with someone who was just slightly improved in every single way. He’d never replace her outright, but he certainly wasn’t afraid to upgrade.
Irene notes the contents of Iris’s basket: sugar, baking soda, carton of eggs. Not a cardboard box in sight. Of course she will be cooking from scratch. Iris never makes anything out of a box. She is a real woman.
“Iris.” Irene fixes a plastic smile on her face. No need to play the role of the bitter ex-wife. For all Iris knew, Irene could be thriving. She could have a boyfriend. Why stop there? She could have two boyfriends. Wasn’t that what all the young people were doing? “What a surprise seeing you here.”
Iris’s smile is natural, going straight to her eyes. She glances into Irene’s cart. Irene winces. The universe truly exists to spit on her.
“Margarita mix, huh? Having a girls’ night?” Iris is nice. That’s the worst part. She wasn’t even a mistress. She obeyed the proper wife-replacing protocol to a tee. It was impossible to hate her, which of course made Irene try even harder.
“It was 50% off.” That isn’t true. Irene knows it and Iris knows it as well.
Iris glances at her watch, and Irene internally sighs with relief. A woman like Iris, there has to be places she needs to be. Where did young women go these days? Yoga studios? Iris probably does yoga and never even breaks a sweat.
“Listen. I know this is going to sound strange, but would you perhaps like to go sit down someplace with me? There’s a coffee shop nearby. I want to talk to you about something.”
Iris’s large green eyes are earnest, hopeful. Something about her is markedly different. Granted, Irene tries her very best to limit any and all interactions with her upgraded model, but whenever she sees the woman she is always taken aback by a certain poise. This is lacking today. Not any lack of beauty. Her appearance is impeccable, each strand of hair perfectly stitched into place. But Irene’s sensitive therapist’s eyes are trained to notice the invisible, and there it is: a flicker beneath the surface. Her curiosity piques. Is her husband’s perfect wife not so perfect after all? It is masochistic to hope for dysfunction within Adam and Iris’s marriage, Irene acknowledges guiltily, but she cannot deny that a tiny part of her is turning cartwheels in jubilee over the notion that Iris may not be as flawless as she appears.
“I don’t know. I have plans later.” Plans. Plans that involve margaritas for six for one.
“Please,” Iris says, her voice cracking slightly at the end.
It was something in her tone, maybe, or otherwise the vulnerability in her eyes. Ten minutes later, Irene is watching a lanky boy strum the opening chords of “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead on a tinny-sounding guitar. Outside the coffee shop a man and woman walks by, gazing at each other in that adoring new-couple way. An all-too-familiar bitterness settles in Irene’s stomach.
A waitress walks over to their booth. “Two green teas with extra honey.”
Iris beams, foisting a teacup like a wineglass in Irene’s direction. “What are the odds we have the same order? You know, I always thought it was just me who disliked coffee.”
“Well, it’s just so…”
“Harsh.”
Irene raised an eyebrow at the word stolen out of her mouth. “That’s what I always say.”
Iris looks away shyly, turning her ring over on her finger. A nervous tic. Irene spent enough time with frustrated housewives in her office to recognize the signs of marital anxiety. Although what Iris has to worry about, Irene has no clue. She is beautiful.
A compliment to herself, in a way. It has been pointed out on more than one occasion that Iris and Irene bear a striking resemblance. Looking at the younger woman now, even Irene had to admit they did look a bit alike. Same green eyes, although Iris’s were larger and brighter. Same fair skin, but Iris’s more radiant. Although you can’t see it in her sunflower-printed dress, Irene knows enough about her husband’s tastes to guess that Iris’s figure is superior as well. It appeared everything about Iris could also be found in Irene. Like someone took her face and body and sculpted it, scraping away every little imperfection. Looking at Iris was like looking at what could have been, if God was only a little more gracious.
“Well, what is it you wanted to talk about?” Irene asks, carefully sipping her tea. Something about being in the same room as Iris felt bizarre. Like two magnets, second wives and first wives were not supposed to interact. The unspoken “him” pervaded the air between the women—Adam, the man who tied them together even closer than the letters of their name.
“I want you to take me. As your patient.” Iris looks at Irene expectantly.
“Surely you know that’s a conflict of interest. Being my ex-husband’s wife and all.”
Iris twists the ring on her finger. Again, that flicker of uncertainty. In that moment the two do not look alike at all. Iris is so young, so fragile. She doesn’t even seem real, like at any moments she could dissipate into the creaky faux-rustic stool. Onstage, the lanky boy finishes his off-key ballad to meager applause.
“Are you in trouble, Iris?” Her mind goes to all the possible reasons a seemingly perfect woman like Iris could want a therapist. Not money problems. Adam took care of that. Adam. Could it be Adam? She thinks of her ex-husband and wonders not for the first time if he loves Iris the way he loved Irene: with narrowed eyes, searching for mistakes.
“I can’t speak of it here.” Iris lowers her eyes like a coy mistress. “Please.”
“I can recommend some of my colleagues…”
Iris shakes her head and leans over the table, grasping Irene’s hand. Irene’s impulse is to pull away from the other woman’s touch, but for some reason she allows it. On the table their hands are both fair against the wood. The blue lines swimming on the white nest of their palms seem to flow into each other. Irene blink quickly. The dewy yellow light in these hipster joints always play tricks on you.
“It can only be you, Irene.”
Irene’s most shameful secret, the one she refuses to broach even with the other bitter first wives, is her desire to know. Perhaps it is the psychologist in her, desperate to unravel the mysteries locked inside people, but she craves the answers deprived from her after the divorce with a maddening hunger. It is embarrassing, her longing to decipher the reasons Adam left her, as though she is trying to calculate if she ever stood a chance at all to keep him. She seeks to stick her hand inside Iris, pull apart the bones of their marriage, and see at last where she went wrong and the other woman went right. She knows it is wrong, and she knows it’ll hurt, and she knows she shouldn’t care in the slightest if he kisses Iris behind the ears or absentmindedly plays with her hair as they watch television. But it is the question at the center of it all, the one that if answered might finally ease her suffering and allow her to at last move on with her life…what does she have that I don’t?
Iris. Irene. The new and old Mrs. Davenport. Irene imagines pushing the chair away, spilling the tea onto the floor and jostling past wannabe-Thom Yorke into the cold autumn wind. Leave Iris and Adam behind. Leave everything from her old life in the coffee shop and start anew. Forget, finally. It is a tantalizing notion, and for a moment she genuinely contemplates it.
But moments pass by like strangers on sidewalks. Something in her eyes. Irene slips.
“Fine. I’ll help you.”
------
“I love you, I love you, I love you.” The words are so easy on the tongue, melted caramel spilling out of my lips. Say a word so many times it loses its meaning, starts to sound like nonsense. I love you. I love you. “I” and “love” and “you” and somehow strung together these flimsy syllables fit so perfectly in your mouth. Words meant to be spoken. To be tasted.
He’s with me now. Lying on the couch beside me. I rub his back the way he likes it. I love this man. For many reasons. Handsomeness, inevitably. Women are vain creatures, loving with eyes before hearts. But I think real love is found in the “in spite of” rather than the “because.” I like him because his eyes are warm and his hands are gentle and in his laugh I hear the first time I ever recognized happiness as anything more than fleeting. But I love him in spite of how he spits out his toothpaste and never rinses the sink. I love him in spite of his burning the toast every morning.
I love him in spite of him not loving me.
Iris/Irene Session #1
Iris Davenport is dressed in newborn whites. Her christening-gown sundress drapes over her knees as she sits in the chair opposite Irene. Truth be told, Irene did not anticipate going through with this. She kept trying to pick up the phone all week, dial that number and cancel the appointment. It’s absurd, she knows it. Unethical. But every single time, she hesitated. There was a voice whispering in her ear, just loud enough to tune out every scrap of reason: You need to see this through. The voice felt intrinsically woven within her, yet at the same time distinct from her internal monologue. She couldn’t help but listen to its allusive command.
“Is there anything specific you would like to talk about?”
Iris’s gaze drifts aimlessly to the candle on the table, the pale-yellow flame rippling across the surface. The flames shimmer in her wide eyes, even as the candlelight wanes.
“I remember something my mother told me when I was young,” Iris says. She stands up, smoothing the white fabric of her dress. With a swift gliding motion, she moves to the bookshelf, running her slender hands across the covers as if absorbing the content inside through mere touch. “She said there are no more original people left in the world. We are all some version of someone else who came before us. A replication. An echo. And it’s impossible to know who made the first noise, and who is just repeating what they’ve already heard from someone else.”
“That’s an interesting theory,” Irene replies. She struggles to imagine the demure young woman in front of her as a colicky, pink-faced infant. Something about her marble-hewn features render it impossible to imagine Iris at any other age, as though she was destined to be frozen in this state of youthful desirableness. “Tell me about your mother.”
Her skin seems to grow paler, and Irene notices that she has no lines on her face. Not a single wrinkle or speck, nor any sign of age or wear. Like a painter’s canvas, she is unmarred and also somehow incomplete.
“I don’t really remember my mother. I’m not even sure if she said that. I just know that once someone wise said that to me, and when you think of wise people, you think of mothers.”
“Have you always had memory problems?” If she did not know any better, Irene would assume Iris is lying. But Iris’s eyes are unabashedly honest and meet Irene’s with a mournfulness that takes her off guard. Those eyes. Irene couldn’t close her eyes without seeing them. It had been like that for the past few nights, Irene’s wistful green eyes haunting her into the early hours of the a.m.
“I dreamt last night I was in bed with him. Adam.” Iris doesn’t blink.
Words burn. Words burn and burn and burn, and Irene is lighting matches all the time. Bringing her finger to the flame. Pulling it away. Just to feel something. This is what she wanted, isn’t it? To know, even if the knowing hurts more than anything?
“At first, I thought it was just an old memory.” Iris strides to the window, where outside wind blows ashy leaves across the pavement. “But he said something peculiar. He said, ‘Irene, what tie should I wear for the New Years’ Party? I want to look good for the new millennium.’ The new millennium. Eighteen years ago.”
Irene remembers the party, the infrared disco lights and the strawberry champagne. The intoxicated murmurs of computers crashing at midnight, reverting society back to the Stone Ages. The excitement, the dread, the aphrodisiac of a looming apocalypse saturating the atmosphere.
“I was wearing a black cocktail dress,” Iris continues, “but I never wear black. And I said he should wear—”
“—the gray tie,” Irene finishes, gasping for breath, “the one with the white stripes. But he insisted on wearing the one with the atoms, the one that makes him look like—”
“A creepy high school science teacher.” Iris’s voice is calm, as if recalling decades-old memories of her husband’s first wife is an everyday occurrence. “We got into a fight, which is how I knew I was you. Adam and I don’t fight.”
The fight. That god-awful fight, one of the firsts in their relationship. He hated how she disrespected his ambition. He was a scientist, goddammit, he was doing life-changing work, and who was she? A psychologist. Psychology was a soft science, little more than rambling New Age nonsense. It was a lady science. She hated how he acted around his colleagues, posing as some sort of prodigal son because he arranged cells in a Petri dish. They spent the whole party shooting hostile looks at each other from a distance. But at midnight he still kissed her, and perhaps it was the mellow of champagne coursing through both of their veins, but the fight was instantly forgiven. It would be the first of many moments like that.
But how can Iris know about any of that? Iris must have been a child at the turn of the millennium. Iris can’t know. It is impossible, yet it is so typical of her replacement to insert herself into something else of Irene’s. She wants to scream like a jealous child, I was first. He loved me first. He kissed me first. Who are you to pretend to be a part of our past?
Irene clicks off the recorder and stands up. “I think you’ve had your fun, Iris. Did Adam tell you to bring this up? Rehash old arguments? Or is this some ploy to get me to give him the Echo & The Bunnymen record back? Because it’s mine, and he didn’t even like them I until I introduced him!”
“Adam didn’t tell me this.” She reaches over to grab Irene’s hands, but Irene pulls away from her touch like it is scalding. “You have to believe me. Irene. I’m not lying. You and me, we’re connected—”
“I need you to leave. This session is over.”
Iris does not put up a fight. She is a polite girl, dressed in white, and with one last somber look she turns away. With the close of the door, the candle lets out a sigh and extinguishes as if giving up as well.
----
I am making pancakes, fluffy white pancakes with blueberries. I’ll drench them in maple syrup. Later I will squeeze the oranges into juice, picking out the pulp. He hates pulp, the big baby. I don’t mind it. I don’t really mind anything.
I play with the ring on my finger. I love how the light catches on the diamond. It’s a lovely ring. He picked it out himself. Men don’t usually have good taste in jewelry. I’m lucky. I repeat that often, how lucky I am to be married to someone who buys me beautiful things and lets me live in this house surrounded by all these luxuries.
I smell him before I see him. Aftershave. Musky. His arms wrap around my waist, undoing my apron. His lips brush against my neck.
“She never used to do this.”
----
If Irene could have a word with her younger self, if she could zip herself into a time machine and wake up inside that cloistered fraternity house on Halloween night circa 1996, she would walk right up to the nineteen-year-old girl with the Mia Wallace bob and the fake blood under her nostrils and beg her, please don’t. She wouldn’t bother asking young foolish Irene not to love him, which would have been hopeless. What she would insist was that she please, please, don’t let him know everything. Don’t let him know your favorite Radiohead song—you’ll never listen to it again. Don’t lie next to him on a futon and tell him the story of the scar on your knee and the chip in your tooth. But ultimately Irene, the old Irene, knows that it would be an exercise in futility to pretend anything else could have happened but what did: the heartbreak, the sinking depression, the constant cloud of memories both fond and painful leeching into every corner of her life.
If Irene was really smart, she might find a way to knock the silly psychology major into a coma before she could destroy her own life.
Irene grips the steering wheel, a sleety gray rain drizzling on the window. The song playing on the radio reminds her of Adam. One seemingly innocuous lyric keeps cycling through her head to the tune of a burgeoning nervous breakdown.
Spent my nights awake and I wonder/what I could have done in another way/to make you stay…
But what did The Cardigans know about her life? She couldn’t even name another one of their songs. She wasn’t some child, begging Adam to love her and need her again. If Iris thought she knew something about Irene, if she thought Irene was a fool—okay, wait, there was the one song that played anachronistically in that television show, the one Adam was always droning on about because it was television elevated to an art form but was really about a bunch of stuck-up rich guys in suits, hardly groundbreaking subject matter in Irene’s opinion—
She is standing in the kitchen, and she knows without even looking at her reflection that her apron is stain free and that her hair is perfect. Worn down, naturally. A man’s hand is on her waist, and the hand is familiar, but the waist is not hers. This is her home, or it was her home, but it isn’t anymore. None of this belongs to her.
The brake screeches, and a cacophony of angry honks jilts Irene upright. The song isn’t playing anymore, replaced by numbing radio static. Pulling the car to the side of the road, Irene rests her head against the horn. She feels possessed, like someone had floated in through the crack in the window and jammed its entire body down her esophagus. Her skin tingles. Clenched on the steering wheel, her hands are throbbing and blue as if the circulation had been momentarily severed.
She had just been in her kitchen. Not the kitchen in her apartment. The kitchen in her true home, the one from her other life. She was cooking him breakfast. But she never cooked breakfast. She never used to do this.
Iris/Irene Session #2
“You don’t know when you were born?”
“No.”
“Your last name?”
“No.”
“Anything about your life before him? Anything at all?”
“Just Adam. He’s in every memory I have. But that’s not possible. Is it?”
“I don’t know what’s possible anymore. All I know is, I don’t put anything past Adam anymore. That man and his pursuit for perfection know no bounds. What did he do to you?”
“He doesn’t do anything to me. I think he still loves you.”
Irene scoffs. “I was never enough for Adam. I wasn’t beautiful enough, domestic enough, supportive enough. Even at my best, I couldn’t be who he wanted. But you…just look at you. You’re everything I ever wanted to be.”
Iris’s green eyes drift out the window again. She seems to Irene now a lost thing, caught in the wind with no ground to land on. “You don’t want to be me, Irene.”
Irene laughs, but it’s less bitter than she intended. Somehow, she has started to like Iris, or at least feel like she knows the other woman better now. The memory which isn’t her memory (is it? It has become so hard to tell, seeing things which happen to Iris which happen to her, the line between is and was and could be blurring together indecipherably) remains in her mind. The way he touches her. It is the same. As if it doesn’t even matter. She could have been Iris. She could have been Irene. There is no difference. Whatever wall used to separate the first and second Mrs. Davenport is crashing into rubble around them.
“Please. You’re perfect. You couldn’t mess up if you tried. Me, all I do is make mistakes. Ask Adam about all the time he dragged me to his conferences. I’d say one wrong thing to a hotshot at a pharmaceutical company and he’d spend the rest of the evening pretending he didn’t know who I was. I bet you’ve never said the wrong thing to anyone.”
“I can’t. I’m not allowed to. That’s the problem with being perfect all the time. You aren’t allowed to be anything else. I wish I could make a mistake. Just once. And then I wouldn’t be afraid anymore. Of him no longer wanting me.”
“We’re not so different, are we, Iris?” Irene looks at Iris like she’s looking into a mirror, and in truth, she is. “We both wanted to be enough for him. But we weren’t. Nobody could ever be good enough for him.”
Iris smiles, but it doesn’t quite meet her eyes.
----
I am cutting the meat. A bulbous lump on the table, it is hard to believe that the slab once was a living thing. If it wasn’t for the blood. All living things bleed. But at least I know the thing is dead now and can’t feel my knife cutting into its jellylike fat.
“A woman with a knife. I can get behind that.”
I turn around. Liquor is on his breath. I suppose he must have been to the bar with his friends. It’s been a stressful week. He has been spending more time in the office lately, his hair graying in the back. Last night I said he looked like George Clooney, but Adam just sighed. Old age wasn’t something he liked to think about. Maybe because I look so young, and I don’t think I’ll ever look older. In a few more years, will people start asking if I am his daughter?
“I’m making your favorite steak. Why don’t you go sit down and watch the game? I’ll bring out your wine shortly.”
“You know I’m not a fan of football,” Adam murmured. “On the other hand, I am a very big fan of my beautiful wife…”
He reaches for me, and in a twisting movement which occurs in the space of a second, I let go of my knife. The blade slips, its crooked angle cutting into the white flesh on the inside of my palm.
“Iris!” Adam reacts with panic, grabbing my hand. His eyes widen at the sight.
My skin parts, but no blood streams from the serrated fold. There is no blood in me. I feel no pain.
I am not a living thing.
Adam drops my wrist and withdraws suddenly. He trembles. I watch as the man I love breaks down. I do not know what causes him to weep, if it is my lack of blood or pain or tears, but I cannot comfort him. I touch his shoulder, trying to tell him however I still can that I love him, but he recoils from my touch like I am burning.
The look in his eyes. Confusion. Fear. Disgust.
“Why can’t you feel?” His voice is rough sandpaper, his words laced in venom. “You’re dead. I’m married to a dead woman. No, you have to live to be dead. I never should’ve made you.”
“What are you talking about?” I beg him. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“You’re not REAL, Irene!” he yells, throwing his hands in the air. His breathing is heavy and strangled.
I am desperate to hold him. If I could touch him, he’d remember who I was, how he used to love me. “Of course, I’m real. I love you, baby. That’s real.”
“No.” Adam shakes his head frantically, pacing the perimeter of the marble island. He stares at me as if he had never seen me before, as if he never wants to see me again. I do not know what I did that makes him look at me like that, like he hates me. “You don’t love me. You don’t know what love is. You’re a robot.”
“I love you,” I protest. I wish I could cry, but Adam hates it when women cry.
I wonder if he is looking for pieces of her in me. All he ever does is look for her these days. Turning away, Adam picks up the dropped blade and studies its silvery sheen in the kitchen light. With a fluid motion, he scrapes it down his arm. Blood bubbles underneath its sharp glint and he laughs bitterly at the red sight.
“Stop that! You’re hurting yourself!” I want to grab the knife from him before he cuts any deeper, but I cannot seem to move. I cannot do anything he doesn’t want me to do. “I love you, Adam! Can’t you see that?”
Adam meets my gaze as though seeing me anew. I remember the first time I saw him. I woke up naked on that table, my creator standing above me. He brought me into the world. He taught me the rules to live in it. He filled the emptiness with color and shapes and lines. All I have ever known, all I am allowed to know, is him. Now he reaches over to me, his blood running down his arms in rivulets, and hands me the rose-tinged knife. His face is solemn now.
“Prove it,” he says. His voice steadies as he presses the knife into my not-bleeding hand. “If you love me so much, Iris. I want you to hurt me. I want to feel something. Make me feel.”
I stare at my hands, my pure white hands. “I can’t.”
“Please.” He looms over me and I can see his hands clenching and unclenching, as if he is imaging my throat locked in his grip. “Hurt me, Iris. I command you.”
I do what he says. I always do what he says. But the blade freezes in my hand, the tip just grazing the fabric of his shirt. Adam stares at me, with bloodshot eyes unseeing. I know what he will do next, and I know I cannot move. I do not feel his hands on me, nor the floor which I fall upon, but it hurts all the same.
Iris/Irene Session #3
Two women stand in front of each other and embrace. If you looked into the office window, you might think them sisters. They certainly do look alike, although one is prettier and younger. The other one, the older one, possesses an air of sophistication and it is clear by her demeanor she is angry. Anger radiates from her, and it is powerful as the desire to hurt and to feel and to be so recklessly alive it kills you. She is saying something. Something about their being nothing original left. Something about echoes. Something about what comes first and what comes last, and nobody knowing the difference.
They kiss like lovers, and it is impossible to tell where one ends and one begins or if there is even any difference at all.
And Irene is in the kitchen, but she isn’t Irene, is she? She is wearing an apron with flowers on it. No, certainly not Irene. But the man in front of her has a face she recognizes. It’s an ugly face, unearthed by the alcohol but Irene knows better than to think his sober mask is any kinder.
“Please.” He is begging, his word slurred. Irene notices the knife in her hand. “Hurt me, Iris.”
Love kills you. Love is an illness. Love leads you into places you never knew existed, and it is this place Irene ventures into as she plunges down the knife. Hurt me. Yes, she will hurt him, and he will hurt her, and it is this familiar dance they will keep falling into until the world and every delusional lover in it is reduced to dust.
She doesn’t realize what she has done until the blood pools on the floor. Adam, her husband. He slouches, gripping his chest and gasping for breath. His eyes meet hers, wide with confusion.
“Irene?” Blood bubbles from his lips. For a moment, she sees the man at the New Years’ Party who didn’t care that she hated his tie. He just wanted to kiss her, because if the world ended tonight and tomorrow they awoke in total darkness, at least he could still drive her home and make love to her on their bed. Maybe he did love her for a while there.
Maybe he never stopped.
Two women stand in a room. A candle flickers on the table before blowing out. The young woman looks down at her hands, the blood coating her fingers. She smiles.
Iris/Irene Session #4
Once she thought love could be lost. But that is wrong. People don’t lose love. Love transfers from one hand to another without ever belonging anywhere. It is an echo, rippling across a surface which extends to the end of the universe. Who cast the first stone? Who cast their love first? Does it even matter? There’s something so beautiful in the finding of new things. Nothing is ever really lost, just waiting to be found.
The indentation on her finger is almost gone. Soon it’ll be as though it was never even there.
Across the table her patient studies her curiously. “Are you okay, Dr. Davenport? Something about you seems…different.”
She smiles, gazing out the window. There was still so much day left. She should go get a cup of tea afterwards. Or maybe go to the movies. She can do anything she wants now.
“I’m seeing someone new,” she says.
And everything falls into place. It was always meant to be this way. She knows that now. She is with the one she loves, and she will never be lonely again.
Jena Vallina is a college student and writer from Illinois. Her work has previously been published in Gordon Square Review and Cold Mountain Review and is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue. She is the recipient of several Hopwood Awards, and received a commendation for the 2020 Adroit Prize in Fiction.