Suddenly she whispered into the dark, humming silence: I hope he comes home soon! Her upper lip started trembling slightly, and a deep sigh went through her, the way children sigh after a long, exhausting cry. The sleeping tablets weren’t working anymore; they stopped working if she fought long enough against sleeping. She was gripped by the strong urge to tell him that she had felt nothing when she saw those mountains, and that she had no idea what he felt. That it wasn’t her fault, and that the children, the three little girls, would be just like her if he didn’t stay. No love lasts forever, and he was almost forty-four, and –

Her heart was hammering, and she sat up, listening to the street. A key was put in the lock. He was here! She slid quietly out of bed and tiptoed to the living room, but he had gone upstairs to the bedroom. Edith put on her housecoat, and without really knowing what she was going to say to him, she followed him barefoot, and opened the door just as he was pulling down his suspenders from his shoulders. His jacket was already over the back of a chair. He looked surprised at her and opened his mouth to say something. But as if she were afraid of what it would be, she stammered out quickly:

‘Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late.’

He smiled awkwardly at her, and stopped undressing.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s always later than you think.’

And even though he probably didn’t mean anything by them, his words kept echoing inside Edith through the years, long after the three little girls had grown up, and gotten married, and come by for infrequent, dutiful visits with their divorced mother. Would something change in their hearts if they ever got to see real mountains? Edith never knew.

The Trouble with Happiness