Missing

“And the cardboard toy theatre and the case of curiosities had been removed as has the ivory table.”  The Great complication  by Allen Kurkweil was the trigger for this piece of flash fiction done in a ten-minute free write along with another writer.

It wasn’t until she dropped her car keys in the hold-all drawer that she realised something was different. The cardboard toy theatre and the case of curiosities had been removed as has the ivory table.

Megan bombed thru the library to the kitchen.

“Son of bitch!” Had Thomas still been living there he would have told her to lower her voice.

That he was the guilty party for the missing items was without alternative. He loved those items as much as she had when they first acquired them. Funny how the same thing could trigger such diverse memories.

They’d bought the theatre at a flea market on a grey November day arguing the seller down to $5 from ten. When they came home they drank hot tea in bed before making love. Only on the next Monday had she learned he was sleeping with Clare.

The curiosity case had been put out on the sidewalk in front of a brownstone apartment building and was under a lilac tree in full bloom. It was down the street from her best frenemy Angela who was another in the Thomas string of lovers.

The ivory table was bought in New Delhi, a second honeymoon or a last attempt to save the marriage. They had held hands as they wandered the bizarre and never  tired of the curries and other food. It might have worked had Thomas not kept going out to call Rene.

She should have changed the locks. 

Tomorrow. 

As she moved a red leather chair into the hole left by the case she vowed that whatever she found to replace the missing items would carry only good memories.