Car idling outside some green and gold gas station in northwest Indiana, I watch my husband reach up and take a Coke down from the top shelf of the cooler inside the door. I smile, and tears fill my eyes. The Coke is for me. I haven't asked for it, but ten years of experience make that clear. Pepsi for him, Coke for me, 20 ounce bottles if they're available. Later, water in sports bottles for the baby who isn't a baby anymore, who is standing next to him long-legged and tanned in her denim skirt and silver flip-flops. She reaches for Orange Crush instead of water, and for a moment I want to flee. Not to leave them so much as not to be watching them, not to see the smile and the easy touch I've seen a thousand times before, not to see him hand her the Coke after he's paid for it. I cannot move, though. A red Blazer, illegally parked, hems me in. It's blurry in the rearview mirror.

My baby climbs into the backseat and my husband checks her seatbelt. He kisses her, and I remember all those infant and toddler days of buckling her into a carseat, how I always kissed her when she was safely snapped in place. Every single time. I remember the days of switching the carseat back and forth between my car and his when he was working nights, and the time he forgot to fasten it and she tipped over, giggling while I tried to tell myself that it was okay to breathe again.

She hands me the Coke and I say thank you, then say it again, louder, to him. "Thank you," but I'm not looking at him because if I did he'd see the tears in my eyes, and I'm either afraid that he wouldn't understand or that he would. He doesn't answer. In the rearview mirror, I see him smiling at my daughter and it doesn't look like it hurts. He closes her door and gets into the red Blazer and I turn up the radio she won't hear me cry.

"It's nice to see Daddy," she says, "but I wish it didn't end with him driving in the other direction."

"We'll see Dad again soon," I manage, watching him slide into the next lane and signal left, for the highway heading south, away from us. And then I turn the radio up another notch.