The suburb was just settling back in from the morning bustle, when everyone needed to be everywhere now.
But just then, the kids were at school, the husband at his six figure a year job, and Caroline was reading The New York Times in the kitchen, sipping on orange juice. It was quiet.
There were exactly seven spices in the spice rack, and she knew their names by heart. Five cans of soup in the cupboard: usually if someone wanted a late night snack. Three boxes of dried pasta — sometimes the kids used them for art projects.
Somewhere in time there had been complaining, there had been groaning, there had been bitching and moaning, but that was as far from now as summer's heat from this here winter. She looked outside, and it was starting to snow lightly. She let herself observe the careful descent, as if each snowflake had a special place where it wanted to land.
Caroline faintly remembered desiring things, things that did not deal with the kid's art projects, fixing late night snacks for the husband, or the seven spices in the spice rack, each for a specific purpose. What were they, exactly? They were less than ghosts.
She remembered the question from her youth, and she wondered if she had ever answered it, or if it had been answered for her somehow: "Who am I?" She blinked. It all vanished.
The snow outside was covering everything quicker than she imagined it would. Soon, it would all be white.
