The man stumbled through the front door, still wearing his coat and shoes, his breath quick as if chased by shadows. “Emily,” he declared, voice trembling with urgency, “we need to talk.”
Emily blinked. *Ah, the midlife crisis has arrived at last*, she mused, eyeing him with the sort of quiet scrutiny she hadnt bothered with in years (five? six? or had it been eight?).
They say your life flashes before your eyes before death. Instead, Emilys life with him flickered pastmeeting online, the careful lies (she shaved off three years; he added two inches to his height), the cautious first date where she wore tinted glasses, a smart brassiere, and carried homemade scones in her handbag along with a dog-eared copy of Jane Austen.
It had been surprisingly easy, their love story. Within months, under the relentless pressure of parents despairing of grandchildren, he proposed. A small wedding followed, hurried along as if they feared one of them might wake up and reconsider.
Their marriage was temperateno hurricanes of passion, just the steady drizzle of contentment. He shed his brief illusion of being a brooding romantic with golden hands, settling instead into joggers and reliability. She loosened the corset of her imagined identitypart intellectual, part sirenuntil pregnancy unraveled it entirely, leaving her wrapped in a dressing gown, sighing with relief.
Twelve years passed. He had never flirted, not once. Emily imagined him tryinghis wide, owl-like eyes growing even rounder in exaggerated admirationand nearly laughed. Over time, she had learned to read every flicker in those dark pupils: the startled delight, the slow satisfaction, the mute outrage. Now, as he stood before her, his gaze stretched impossibly wider, she braced herself.
“Ive fallen in love,” he confessed.
Emilys throat tightened. She pictured some womansome *creature*being showered with his silent, blinking praise. “And what,” she managed, “is her name?”
His eyes nearly rolled from his head. “How did youhow could you possiblyknow its a *rat*?” He fumbled in his pocket and produced a small, greyish-brown rodent with pink ears, a twitching nose, and eyes like polished beads.
Emily stared. At him. At the rat. At the way it nestled against his chest. And then, inexplicably, she was happybecause of course, of *course*, he had chosen a creature that looked just like her.
