I came home a month early, dreaming of pasta, candles, and a warm embrace. Instead, I found two kids on my rug, strumming my ukulele like it was junk, and my husband looking like he’d seen a ghost. “Kim?
You’re early,” he said.
Oh, he had no idea how early the storm was.
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I always imagined my surprise return would look like something out of a Hallmark movie.
You know the kind—soft lighting, the smell of garlic and thyme curling through the air, music low and warm in the background.
I’d be standing there with pasta bubbling on the stove and candles flickering on the table.He’d walk in, drop his keys, see me, and his whole face would light up.
Like it used to.
Back when my tours were short, and his smiles came easy.
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He’d cross the room in two long strides, wrap me in his arms, and for a moment, nothing else would matter.
Just the two of us, tangled in garlic-scented joy.
But that dream popped like a soap bubble the second I stepped into our bedroom.Two girls—maybe eleven, maybe younger—were sitting cross-legged right in the middle of my Persian rug, the one I spent a week choosing in Des Moines.
One of them had my ukulele in her hands, holding it like it came from a discount bin, plucking the strings with sticky fingers.
My music notebooks were everywhere, pages bent and scattered like someone had tossed them in the wind and let them fall where they may.