This isn't weird.

The Attic

Noah Wexler had been plagued for months now by the niggling sensation of having forgotten something important. Only a minor annoyance, of course, but its constancy was beginning to trouble him. He was in a state of almost permanent distraction. Every time his thoughts wandered, he began racking his brain in search of this unnamed something without even realizing he was doing it. It was keeping him up late at night. Well, later at night. He'd always been a poor sleeper—his predisposition toward a bedtime just this side of sunrise was a source of endless frustration for his wife.

His wife. It was something about his wife, wasn't it?

That was what made it so baffling. Rebecca didn't let him forget things. She wasn't the type to quietly hope he would remember birthdays, anniversaries, dinner parties, ballet recitals—she plied him with daily reminders for weeks in advance of any event she considered remotely important. If something she had asked him to had slipped his mind, she would have pointed it out to him by now. She'd had to do an awful lot of that these days, as he'd grown steadily more distracted and sleep deprived with each passing day, especially as they were making the final preparations for their upcoming trip.

Ugh. The trip.

His track record for finagling his way out of Rebecca's yearly visit to her parents was impeccable. For seven straight years, he'd managed to avoid stepping foot in their home at all, but his luck (and excuses) had finally run out. Why they would even want him there, he couldn't begin to fathom; his in-laws had never taken any pains to conceal the fact that they loathed him. But not as much as they loathed an incomplete family photo, apparently—that was the sort of thing that made people gossip.

"Noah. Noah. Noah!"

The hand on his shoulder startled him so badly, he knocked over a full cup of coffee as his elbow jolted. "Shit, shit, sorry!" he said, jumping to his feet to fetch a paper towel, but Rebecca already had a dish cloth in hand.

"You fell asleep again," she said with a patient smile. Rebecca had a beautiful smile. She was a gorgeous woman; eyes dark as night, with heavy lashes set into a delicate, heart shaped face. A small, full mouth that, at rest, defaulted to an alluring pout. Glossy black hair that tumbled over her shoulders in voluminous waves. It was a universally accepted truth that Noah Wexler was the luckiest man alive to have her all to himself. Ask anybody.

"Sorry. I didn't get much sleep last night," he mumbled, standing uselessly beside her as she cleaned up his mess.

"Or the night before that. Or the night before that," she replied. "You really should see a doctor about your insomnia, Noah. I keep telling you, long term sleep deprivation is a major risk factor for early onset Alzheimer's."

"What? You've never said that to me before."

"I've literally been saying that to you everyday for the last—" Seeing his grin, she stopped, and rolled her eyes. "Oh. That's very funny."

She wasn't being sarcastic. Rebecca didn't laugh at jokes. She did enjoy them, but when she thought something was funny, she simply said so. In seven years of marriage, he'd never heard her laugh once. Netting a 'very' and an eyeroll? She may as well have been on the floor wheezing.

"Where did you put your suitcase?" she asked, walking to the sink to wring out the coffee-saturated towel. "I'm loading them into the car."

"Kind of early for that, isn't it? Why not wait until tomorrow morning?"

"It's going to be trouble enough wrangling two cranky children and a half-conscious man into the car without worrying about loading in the luggage. We both know you'll be too tired to help."