Are you home, honey?

     Amy loved the feel of his arms, the way they draped over her when he was still asleep. The warm skin of his neck filled her vision and still tasted of  him. She knew if she looked up, his eyes would be so soft, all the worries of his life drained away. Several wrinkles would crease through the scattered stubble around his mouth where he laughed at Jenna's antics and ideas. There was still a small bald patch on the left side of his face where their beautiful little devil had cut some hair away during her last scissor rampage.
     She finally stretched her arms, which were, surprisingly, not sore from carrying all those Christmas light boxes out yesterday. Jason loved those stupid icicles, as much of a hassle as they were to put up. She smiled again, remembering their disasters yesterday. Her hands reached for their alarm clock to see if it was too early to risk getting up and turning the coffeemaker on. Her hands searched for a moment but felt a strange cell phone, crumpled paper-

     Amy bolted upright. The room was small and messy, Jason's clothes thrown everywhere. A handful of empty boxes sat in the corner, marked as storage for his old books and mismatched socks that he would leave behind when he went to college in the fall. Her arm fell to her stomach, reaching for the long scar of her C-section. It was gone: her child, her only baby, everything was no longer real. She turned, seeing Jason as she hadn't for a dozen years, a dozen hours. He was young, his hair still cropped short. She missed the glasses he hadn't yet gotten just after graduation, the way they might have made his brown eyes seem so serious...
     Another dream. She tried to stop her hands from shaking, to focus on what year it was and what had happened. How many times had she lived out her life with the boy next to her? Ten? Twenty? Each time was more real, always so peaceful. They fought-might be going to fight over whose sister was a bitch, whether they should move to a bigger city, what school to send the kids to. But they were together, and it worked out alright, always...
     Jason stirred. Amy looked back at him. He was her lover, her husband for better and worse, the father of her children. And yet he was some boy, barely 18, still unable to cook. She had spent a dozen lifetimes with him, but she didn't even know what cheese he put on his sandwiches. They'd spent the night together most nights lately, as her house was being tented for termites, but he was still a stranger to her, a memory in the old yearbooks of her husband, as if he was some relation who had come to spend the night.
     She scribbled a note to Jason and grabbed her phone before setting it back down. She didn't want any interference in her memories of him.