The morning light fell softly across our kitchen counter, catching the edge of the seating chart I had been rearranging for three straight days. I stood there in Mark’s old hoodie, sipping the coffee he had poured for me before he left for his run, feeling that quiet, settled kind of luck. The kind you don’t say out loud because you don’t want to jinx it.
Mark was good to me.
That was the thing that made everything that came later so confusing.
He remembered I took my coffee with one sugar and a splash of oat milk, never almond. My mother called him “the son she always wanted,” which used to make me roll my eyes — until I realized she meant it.
“You hit the jackpot, Cindy,” my best friend, Reese, told me over brunch the month before the wedding.
“I know,” I said, stirring my mimosa.
“He has, like, golden retriever husband energy. Do you understand how rare that is?”