She Walked Out, and Ten Years Later She Showed Up With Expensive Gifts at a Twelfth Birthday Dinner

She stood in the middle of the kitchen linoleum, staring at the yellowed wallpaper behind the stove where the edge was peeling away from the drywall.

“You used to care about what happened to me,” she said.

“I used to be your husband,” I said.

I lifted her black coat off the back of the kitchen chair and held it out to her by the shoulders.

She looked at the black coat a long while before she slid her arms into the slick lining of the sleeves.

She left the front unbuttoned.