“I’m so glad you’re here. Not here here, but you know what I mean,” Suhani says as she reaches to cup his face the way she’s wanted to for hours. She loves his face, plain and simple. She loves his full lips and the dimple in his chin. She loves the way his smile stretches all the way up to his deep-set eyes, which are framed by black square glasses.

But Zack steps back as if he’s dodging a punch. The move is so jarring, so unlike him, that Suhani first thinks she must have misread it. But then she sees the firmness of his posture, his navy-blue All Birds shoes glued to the floor.

“What are you . . . ?” Suhani trails off, confused. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re not in the best place, remember?”

The words bring her back to reality, their reality. Her stomach churns as she thinks about how she packed her suitcase and left the apartment, how she texted him after she was in her childhood bedroom.

“Obviously, I remember,” she says. “But I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.” Zack sighs. Despite his words, a gnawing dread forms in the pit of Suhani’s stomach.

“My dad told me about how you were willing to go to med school,” she says, needing him to know how much she appreciates everything he’s done for them. “You did so much to make sure we would work. You always have.”

Zack sighs and tilts toward her. “You’ve done things for us, too. I know you have.”

“We both have. Remember what we said at Little Spirit about how we made it through so many big things that should have been stressful?” she asks.

But as the words leave her, a truth materializes in her mind. Even though marriages are often defined by the big events, it’s the smaller, day-to-day moments that really form their tapestries.

Zack stares at the floor, which is covered in scuff marks and a speckled pattern that always makes it look a little dirty. His silence pushes her to keep going.

“Maybe we can go home and talk,” she says. “And just be together.”

She waits for him to say Yes, of course or There’s nothing I want more or maybe even his go-to Moooovin’ right along!

But when he looks up, his hazel eyes are coated with a heavy sadness. “I think I need some more time apart.”

“What? Time apart from us?”

Zack bites his bottom lip. “Yeah. From us.”

Instead of comforting her, the calmness in his voice is like a fist around her windpipe. Because Zack doesn’t make big, empty statements. No, that’s a trademark of the Joshi women, to say things in a fit of heightened emotion and then take them back later.