183. The Dinner That WaitedNova

The first thing I notice is how clean the kitchen is.

Not the staged kind of clean. Not the untouched, unused, no one lives here anymore kind. This is lived-in order. The counters gleam, yes, but there’s a faint water mark near the sink. The spice rack is aligned, but not obsessively so. The cutting boards are stacked the way someone stacks them when they expect to use them again.

I set the grocery bags down slowly on the counter, my chest tightening with ...