w a t e r s o n g

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The rest of Miranda's day flew by, and her encounter with Crissy was relegated to the back of her mind. There were students needing to sign up for ACT retakes, an argument between two members of the science department to mediate, and a meeting with the administration to discuss how they would handle the new suicide watch training the state was mandating.

By the time she got home, she was ready to change into her pajamas and have a glass of wine. Never mind making dinner; she called for pizza delivery after a brief spat between Regina and Serena about what to get on it. In the end, Serena won, and they got pepperoni, despite Regina's distaste for the ingredient. She could always pick it off, Serena said, and she was right. What was the point in ordering half cheese when Regina was the only one who wanted it?

Regina stomped off to her room, and Serena adjourned to the living room to watch a reality show about something called catfishing. Miranda took the moment of peace to escape to her room and slip on a t-shirt and leggings. As she removed her makeup in the master bath, her eyes wandered to the medicine cabinet. She really shouldn't take a Xanax if she was going to have wine, but she figured one wouldn't kill her, so she retrieved the bottle and shook one--no, two--into her palm. She grabbed a cup from beside the sink and filled it with lukewarm water to wash it down. Sweet release.

It was only then that she realized she hadn't seen Raph since that morning. It wasn't unusual for the two of them to go for days without saying more than the usual good morning, going over the schedule for the day, and then chatting with the girls over dinner. Her hunch was that he was in the "man cave" he convinced her to let him build in the basement when the two of them bought the house years ago.

She returned to the main floor, passed Serena watching her strange show that included a couple of guys devoted to tracking down suspicious online personalities, and then stood before the basement door. She thought about knocking for some reason. It's what she would have done if she were standing outside one of her daughters' rooms, and she supposed that's what the basement was--Raph's room--since she rarely went down there. She shrugged off the strange sensation, though, and opened the door. The space belonged to the family. It was silly to feel as though it were a private area.

As she walked down the stairs, her bare feet sinking into the soft carpet, she heard her husband's music playing on the stereo. She smiled slightly as she recognized the song--"Angels of the Silences" by the Counting Crows. It was a band they'd listened to back in college, when they were young with years stretching before them like putty to play with, make into anything.

Those days were gone, of course, and they'd shaped their lives into something resembling adulthood. It was a scary place where every day flew by as quickly as she blinked her eyes, and the years piled up faster than she ever thought they could, into a tower so rickety that she imagined she could flick it with one finger and the whole thing could collapse before her.

She reached the bottom step, ready to coax her husband upstairs for pizza, and saw him sitting at his desk with his laptop open. "Hey--"

He jumped and slammed the computer closed. Spinning his chair around to face her, he plastered a smile on his face where there'd been none before, and she had the feeling she was looking at a mask quickly pulled on. There are different sorts of warning bells, Miranda had learned throughout the years. Some were loud, like when a girl came into her office wearing long sleeves in the hot days at the beginning of the school year, indicating she had some scars to hide. But there were subtler bells, too, the ones that pinged so lightly that you really had to be paying attention to catch them. She caught one now, just an off feeling, like Raph was hiding something from her.

Years ago, Raph had run into some financial problems. He'd become obsessed with online gaming, only he was using real money, their money. He'd hid it and hid it until finally he came to her in tears, confessing the zeros at the end of the number of his debt. He couldn't go to his parents for help, he'd said. He wouldn't. She'd helped him through that time, paying as much as she could from her meager paycheck, but only if he promised it would never be a problem again. It hadn't, yet, as far as she new.

But the look on his face.

Like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't.

She mirrored his smile then, telling herself that everything was fine. She was probably just projecting her bad day onto this moment. She knew her job came with a lot of baggage, and she'd promised herself that she wouldn't bring it home and let it interfere with her family life. That's all this was, residue from her horrible day seeping into her interaction with her husband.

"Pizza's on its way," she said smoothly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "Pepperoni, your favorite."

"Sounds awesome," he replied. "Just let me finish up down here and I'll be up."

She turned around and walked back up the stairs, feeling as though she'd been dismissed.

What exactly had he been doing on his computer, she wondered. 

And why was it a secret?