He had come into the kitchen on a mission: she was close to the refrigerator.
The refrigerator had last night’s hamburgers in it.

Slowly, he clicked across the white tile and sat, two feet away from the refrigerator door. She was close, but not there. Her back was turned and she leaned into the sink, scrubbing.

Oscar snorted. He couldn’t really sneeze or huff – being a pug, his nasal passages were squashed and his breaths all came out in wet snorts and gurgles. He snorted, and she turned around. Immediately a smile lit up her face. He loved it when she smiled.

“Hey there, Stumpybutt!”

Sara reached down and lifted Oscar’s tiny sausage-body in her rubber-gloved hands. He snorted again and gnawed at fallen strands of her brown hair.

“Oh, I’m sorry little guy, my gloves smell, I know.” Their faces rubbed together while she swayed back and forth, cradling him against her chest. “I haven’t given you love all day, have I?”

Grinning, she blew a thin stream of air into Oscar’s face. He snapped at the air, snarling playfully and attempted to bite it.

“Daddy’s coming home tonight, remember?”

The word “daddy” sparked something in Oscar’s mind. He didn’t see a face, he smelled a body. He smelled hair gel and worn-out leather shoes and cologne mixed with human skin, and his tail waggled back and forth, this time in excitement.

“Yes, Daddy’s coming home! You missed your daddy, didn’t you?”

Sara kissed the flat end of Oscar’s nose then set him down, expecting him to run for the door. He looked up at her, his whole body wiggling with the effort of his tiny tail; his feet shuffled a little bit, and then he sat back down at the refrigerator.

“What a little piggy,” Sara laughed, and got back to washing her breakfast dishes.

Oscar snorted.

Back at the sink, Sara thought about Angus, finally on the road. This was his first business trip since he’d been promoted three weeks ago. It didn’t come with a fancy new title like “Manager” or “Chief,” but the pay raise made up for that.

Finally.

After two years of working with his nose down and two years of living the silent life of an entry-level suburban nobody (with Angus’s father down his back the whole time), they were finally getting the chance to climb the ladder. And so young yet. That’s what all her friends said: so young and already on the way.

On our way.

Sara drifted off into images of the pair of them, much older (grandparents by then), dressed to the nines, walking hand-in-hand down the deck of a cruise ship, dimly lit against the black of night. He was a handsome older man – her mind flashed to the last images of Angus, kissing her and giving her a little ‘boop’ on the nose before she watched him walk out the door. So handsome. The thought made her eyes glow.

He hadn’t been too thrilled about leaving that morning, she remembered. Apparently he wasn’t important enough to fly, but the company had given him funds to rent a car and promised to reimburse his gas. A small consolation. But the fact that the drive was four hours one-way didn’t raise his spirits any; and in truth it wasn’t as much a business trip as a training seminar. A ‘pencil dick convention’ he called it.

She’d laughed and reminded him of his shiny new office and that now they could afford to start putting money away... for college tuition in 18 years. His answer was a wry smile and a raised eyebrow.

Finally.

Sara hadn’t noticed, but by now she had been rinsing the same bowl long after the suds were gone and was softly smiling at the blue and white tile backsplash. She blinked and caught herself daydreaming, and that made her grin even wider.

The water shut off, she squeezed out her sponge to wipe down the counters, when her cell phone chittered its generic midi ringtone that she’d never gotten around to changing. Still grinning dreamily, she walked across the kitchen, sponge in hand, and grabbed the phone from where it sat on the dining table. The screen read, “ANGUS.” The grin turned into an ear-to-ear smile. She answered before the second ring.

“Well hello, husband. I was just thinking about you.”

There was a moment of static on the line and then Angus’s voice – canned and distant.

“Sara.”

Sara leaned over and pressed the phone harder against her ear. As if squishing the cartilage there would allow her to hear better.

“Angus?” She paused. When there was no reply, she asked again. “Hello, hello, can you hear me?”

“SARA.”

Suddenly his voice was crystal clear and very loud. Reflex yanked the phone from her ear and she stood straight up, even taking a small step backward.

“Jesus, Angus! You scared me,” she chuckled. “Are you on the road yet?”

“Sara, I… think I wrecked the car.”

Any remaining traces of a smile vanished from her face.

“What?” she asked sharply.

Angus responded immediately. “The car is wrecked. I’m stuck. And cold.”

Instantly, Sara’s body began to quake; her wide eyes glazed over and the kitchen vanished, her senses vanished, her world vanished. She saw Angus - was with Angus - trapped in a car, blood pouring down his face, down his arms, down his chest. She smelled his blood, felt the immense pressure of a car crushed around him, saw the horror on his face.

Words exploded from her mouth in a single frenzied breath.

“Oh my god, are you hurt, what happened, did you call the police, where are you, are you okay??”

Her brain was locked onto the image of her bloodied husband, crushed behind the steering wheel; and now he was upside down, his blood pattering onto the roof of the car. And then she saw a fire start at the gas tank.

“I’m…” Angus began to say, but Sara cut him off.

“Angus, get out of the car!” She was screaming into the phone now, tears already flowing down her cheeks. But she couldn’t feel them rushing down, couldn’t hear the panic in her voice. She only saw the fire spreading – smelled the leaking gasoline.

“Get out of the car now!”

“Sara,” Angus’s voice was calm and steady, “I’m not in the car. I got out.”

“You’re – oh my god,” Sara sighed and released what felt like a hot air balloon full of breath from her lungs. The scene in her brain switched from carnage to quiet. She pictured Angus standing tall next to the burnt shell of what once was his car, no blood in sight, the phone up to his ear.

She practically whispered, “oh my god.”

Suddenly she couldn’t feel the muscles in her legs. As she reached out to grab a chair in order to steady herself, she noticed the sponge still in her other hand, which was clenched so tightly she could only see a bit of pink bulging out from underneath. Sara dropped the sponge and swung her body onto a kitchen chair just in time to prevent herself from collapsing onto the floor.

And as if slowly revealed from behind a lifting fog, the kitchen came back into focus: the smell of dish soap, the whisper of a heater, the solidity of the dining table, and Oscar pacing back and forth at her feet, glaring up at her. His tongue flopped around and his nails clicked against the white tiles.

“Where are you?” she asked in a much calmer - but shaky - voice. Her eyes followed Oscar without really seeing him.

There was a pause. “In the snow.”

Of course, the snow. He’d been driving back from Chicago.

Sara tried to steady her voice, but her body still shuddered with terror and adrenaline.

“Have you called 911?” she sniffled.

“No… No I just called you,” he replied. His voice was clear but sounded far off, distracted somehow.

“Babe, you have to call 911 and tell them where you are.”

“I don’t… know where I am. There’s just snow.” Another pause and Sara could faintly hear eddies of wind through the phone. “It’s cold out here.”

Her brain produced a new scene: Angus hunched and shivering, standing knee-deep in snow while icy wind whipped at his back. Surrounding him was nothing but miles of dead black forest piled in oceans of snow.

Fresh tears flowed down her face burning hot tracks across her cheeks. Reaching up to wipe away the tears, Sara realized she was still wearing her yellow rubber kitchen gloves. And, suddenly angry at the gloves, she tried to rip them off, but her arms had no strength.

Which made her cry harder.

Balancing the phone with her shoulder, it took almost a full minute for her to peel them away, and she hurled them onto the floor with all the meager force she had left.

“Baby,” she cried, her voice sounding pathetic and small, “Do you have your jacket on?”

Silence. Then, “no jacket.”

And as Oscar settled down to lie on top of her feet, Sara put her forehead onto the table and began to sob.