Even the indifference, the numbness that had felt so certain and committed that I didn’t go into work at all—even it left me by the time I got home, so that when I arrived, I sat for sometime in the car with the engine running and the radio on, lost in a what-have-I-done reverie. Surely ten thousand e-mails awaited, asking where the hell I’d been. Surely there were puzzled or angry messages on my voice mail, or maybe Smith had answered the phone and I’d have to explain myself to him, justify why I’d wasted his time. Oddly no one had called my cell phone all day. What was worse, if everyone was made furious by my absence, or if no one had noticed it at all? I opened the kitchen door to the smell of spice and tomato, the sight of Smith at the stove. Binx was in his high chair, sucking on a bottle, Mattie at the table making a chain out of paper clips, both of them concentrating so hard they barely spared me a glance when I came in. On the counter, chips and guacamole in the chips-and-dip serving dish we’d gotten for our wedding and never used.
