The evening meal was spread upon the table. A great slab of meatloaf and a bowl of cooked green beans. There was enough to feed a family of five, but only two sat at the table.
Margret was always making more food than she or Rick could eat. It was a habit she had acquired from her mother, though her mother had had seven mouths to feed. Rick would always jokingly ask Margret what she was practicing for. Always he saw the hurt in her eyes when he said this.
Margret was unable to bear children. The two had been trying for the entirety of their marriage. They had visited every fertility doctor they could find. All had said the same thing; that it was Margret who was infertile, and none of them had a solution to the problem.
The two drank red wine and discussed the day’s happenings. Rick worked as a paralegal in a law office, and Margret was a home care nurse for a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. Margret spoke of how the woman was getting worse everyday, and soon she would be permanently bed ridden. The woman’s family wished for Margret to move into the house when this happened or else they would find a different nurse. The family lived many hundreds of miles away, and could not look after the woman themselves.
