The vase had been whole moments ago, now it lay shattered at her feet. Just like her marriage, she thought.
She didn’t even know the neighbor’s name.
The woman stared back at her, wrapped in a sheet. Their sheet.
“I’m sorry” he mumbled, as stunned as she.
“We never meant…” their neighbor added.
That made it worse. We? Surely we and us had been reserved for them.
She kneeled to collect the broken pieces. She would glue them back together again; build a new vase. The pieces would fit, but the cracks would always show.
Just like her marriage.