“What?”
“Your finger.”
He looked again.
“Oh.”
He rubbed the pale skin with his thumb.
“Probably from holding the fishing rod.”
I stared at him.
“A fishing rod left a ring around your finger?”
He shrugged.
“Pressure, maybe.”
I didn’t believe him.
But I said nothing.
Mark and I had been married nineteen years.
Every summer, he spent three days at the lake with the same group of friends.
They stayed in the same cheap motel.
Complained about the cell service.
Came home smelling like fish, sunscreen, and beer.
It was so predictable that I barely thought about it anymore.
But that year, Mark felt different.
Distracted.
Careful.
When he unpacked, he took his bag upstairs instead of leaving it in the hallway like usual.
At dinner, he checked his phone three times.
And when I asked whether he had caught anything worth bragging about, he said:
“Not really.”
