John Mandroski picked up the small yellow sticky-note off the kitchen floor. “Carl – 9:00,” he read, clearly written in his wife’s flowing script. He stuck it on his briefcase with the intention of putting it on Anne’s desk in their computer den where he headed to check his e-mails quickly before she herself returned home.
“How was your day, Hon?” Anne asked him as they bustled around each other filling pots and turning on stove burners in their interior decorator-designed especially for the modern busy working-couple kitchen. After fifteen years of marriage, they had worked into a perfect rhythm of sharing the meal preparation and other household chores that simulated the choreography of a Broadway musical.
“Okay,” John answered, “although I don’t think we got the Conway contract locked up as I had hoped. Hope your day was better than mine.” Unconsciously he ran a hand through his thick greying hair in a gestural habit that Anne learned to recognize as worry but this time went unnoticed.
“Same as always,” she replied. “Tied to my computer chair for seven and a half hours—eight if you count lunch. The only exercise I got today was walking into the office, walking out, and a quick run through the supermarket for these steaks.”
John found the yellow note still stuck to his briefcase as he set it on his desk the next morning in work. He glanced quickly at his watch: 8:20 a.m. He called Anne at the office, let the phone ring several times, then hung up quickly as his boss walked in.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology