The Night

Chapter 1 – The Night He Didn’t Come Home

The rain had been falling since dusk, the kind that turns every streetlight into a trembling halo. I watched it from behind the café window, tracing the condensation with a fingertip. Midnight was slipping closer. He was supposed to be home by nine.

The city outside looked like it was holding its breath—alleys slick as oil, taxis whispering over puddles, neon signs flickering like nervous eyes. The smell of burnt coffee hung in the air. I’d been sitting there for an hour, maybe two, staring at the door, waiting for the sound of his coat brushing against mine.

He never walked in.

By the time I reached our apartment, the corridor lights were flickering again. The place was silent, too silent, like the room itself was pretending nothing had happened. His shoes weren’t by the door. The umbrella he always forgot was still dripping in the corner.

I called his name once, twice. My voice didn’t sound like mine. The echo came back from the kitchen tiles and disappeared into the hum of the refrigerator.

The clock ticked on the wall, a steady heartbeat that didn’t belong to anyone anymore.

I poured a drink I didn’t need and lit a cigarette I didn’t want. The smoke curled upward, lazy and indifferent, the way he used to look at me when I asked him where he’d been. Funny thing about smoke—it knows how to leave a room gracefully. People don’t.

By two a.m., I called his office. A sleepy voice told me he’d left at eight-thirty. No one knew where he went after that.

The night stretched thin. I sat on the sofa, still in my coat, the city’s lights pressing against the curtains. Every sound outside—sirens, footsteps, laughter—felt like it might be him.

But he didn’t come home.

At four, I found his lighter on the balcony rail. The same silver one he carried everywhere, initials engraved: A.R. I ran my thumb over the letters until the metal warmed beneath my skin. He was always careful with that lighter. He wouldn’t have left it behind.

That’s when the first thought came, quiet as a whisper: maybe he wasn’t coming back.

I told myself not to dramatize. He could be anywhere—working late, staying with friends, needing space. But the thought stayed, like a stubborn tune you can’t shake off.

When dawn crept through the curtains, I still hadn’t slept. The rain had stopped, but the streets below were drowned in mist. I could almost see him walking there, blurred by fog, turning a corner I couldn’t reach.

I told the police by afternoon. They asked the usual questions—when, where, why. I answered like someone reading from a script. Their pens scratched across the page, a dry, accusing sound. One of them asked if we’d been happy.

“Happy?” I repeated. The word felt like a lie spoken in daylight.

They nodded politely, wrote something down, and told me to call if I heard anything.

When they left, I realized the apartment smelled different—like rain, metal, and something faintly sweet. His cologne lingered in the air, mixing with the smoke. I stood there, eyes closed, listening to the silence between my heartbeats.

That night, I dreamed he was knocking at the door. I woke to find the door wide open and the corridor light flickering again. The city beyond it was breathing fog into the hallway.

I stepped forward, half-expecting to see him standing there, dripping rain onto the floor, smiling that careful smile that always hid more than it revealed.

But there was no one. Only the wind, moving like a whisper through the stairwell.

And in that wind, I thought I heard his voice. Just once.
Soft.
Close.
Gone

Chapter 2 – The Questions They Asked Me

The detective’s office smelled of wet paper and old cigarettes. Light leaked in through the blinds, striping the desk in pale bars. I sat where they told me to sit, hands folded, eyes on the dust floating between us.

He had that kind of voice that made every word sound like an accusation.
“Mrs. Reyn,” he said. “You told us your husband left work at eight-thirty?”

I nodded.

“And you didn’t see him after that?”

“No.”

He clicked his pen once. The sound cut through the silence. “Were you expecting him?”

“I always do.”

He watched me for a long time. “Your neighbors say there was an argument last week.”

I almost smiled. Arguments were our nightly ritual—like brushing our teeth. “We talked loudly,” I said. “Some people mistake honesty for noise.”

He wrote that down. I wanted to tell him that love is just another form of interrogation, but he probably wouldn’t have understood.

They kept asking the same things, circling back, as if repetition could make the answers confess. Where he might have gone. Whether he had enemies. Whether I did. I told them what I remembered—or what I wanted to remember. Memory’s a funny thing; the more you look at it, the more it rearranges itself to please you.

When it was over, the detective stood. “If anything comes to you, call.”

“I don’t think memory works on command,” I said.

He smiled a thin smile. “It does when it wants to clear its conscience.”

Outside, the sky had turned the color of lead. The streets hissed under tires. I walked without choosing a direction until the city thinned into fog.

At home, the phone rang three times that evening, but there was no one on the other end. Just a breath, steady and familiar. I told myself it was a wrong number, that the city’s lines get crossed in the rain. Still, I stayed up until morning, listening to the hum of electricity behind the walls.

The next day, I went through his desk—drawers full of invoices, half-written letters, a photograph of the two of us at the pier. He’d written something on the back in his precise, accountant’s handwriting: “For when we forget how it started.”

I traced the words until the ink blurred.

In the kitchen, the radio played an old tune, something slow and full of static. I let it fill the room. The refrigerator buzzed like a mechanical heartbeat. For a moment, I thought I heard footsteps in the corridor.

But when I opened the door, only the neighbor’s cat was there, watching me with the same suspicion the detective had.

That evening I met the detective again, purely by accident—or maybe he’d arranged it that way. He was standing under the awning of the hotel across the street, hat pulled low, rain beading on his coat.

“You ever notice,” he said, “how people disappear in this city and the city doesn’t even blink?”

“Cities aren’t sentimental,” I replied.

He lit a cigarette, offered me one. I shook my head.

“You look tired,” he said. “Dreaming much?”

“Only when I’m awake.”

He studied me, the smoke curling between us. “If you remember anything—anything at all—call me. Sometimes truth hides in the small things.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

As I walked away, I could feel his gaze on my back, heavy as rain.

That night, the fog returned, thicker than before. The city’s edges dissolved into it. I stood by the window, watching the reflection of my own face in the glass. Somewhere behind that reflection, the streetlamps flickered like slow pulses.

I whispered his name once, testing how it sounded in an empty room. The syllables fell flat.

Then, faintly, I smelled his cologne again—the same mix of cedar and tobacco that used to cling to his coats. It drifted through the apartment like a memory trying to find its owner.

I turned around.

Nothing.

Only the lighter on the table, its metal catching the streetlight for a second before the clouds swallowed it.

And I thought, maybe the detective was right.
Maybe truth does hide in the small things.
Like a lighter.
Like a breath on the phone.
Like a woman waiting for a man who might never have left.