I walk into the kitchen and immediately know something has happened. The sugar jar has moved. Normally it sits beside the toaster, slightly behind the coffee container and far enough from the edge that Mr. Whiskers can’t reach it without committing to an operation. Today it’s sitting on the opposite side of the counter near the refrigerator. I stop in the doorway and look at Pandora, who’s standing at the sink. “Did you move the sugar?” She turns around and asks what I’m talking about, so I point at the jar. She looks at it, looks back at me, and casually says yes before returning to whatever she’s doing in the sink. That’s interesting. Normally when somebody admits to moving something, there’s an explanation attached to it. *I was cleaning. I needed it. It was in the way. The cat was attempting a burglary.* Something. Pandora has given me nothing.
I ask why she moved it, and without turning around she says she needed it. Naturally, I ask what she needed it for. “Something,” she says. There it is. Something. I don’t like indefinite pronouns before coffee. I walk over to the counter and examine the jar. The lid is on correctly, nothing appears damaged, and the amount of sugar inside looks slightly lower than I remember, although I recognize that estimating granular volume by sight is probably not considered reliable evidence in most jurisdictions. Pandora dries her hands and asks if I’m okay. I tell her I’m fine. She points out that I’m staring at the sugar, and I explain that I’m merely looking at it, which she insists is exactly what staring means. Before I can defend the distinction, Mr. Whiskers walks into the kitchen and immediately goes to Pandora. She bends down and scratches his head, and he starts purring. I make a mental note. Pandora looks directly at me and says, “Don’t.” I haven’t actually done anything, but apparently I’ve developed a recognizable face for this sort of thing.
Pandora leaves the kitchen, and Mr. Whiskers follows her, leaving me alone with the sugar. There are moments in a person’s life when instinct tells him something important has changed. Sometimes it’s a tone of voice. Sometimes it’s an unfamiliar car outside. Sometimes it’s a mysterious phone call. Sometimes it’s three inches of countertop. I pour myself some coffee and review what I know. Pandora moved the sugar. Pandora needed the sugar for “something.” Pandora declined to identify what that something was. Then Pandora left the room with Mr. Whiskers immediately following her. That’s three facts, possibly four if the purring matters. I’m not saying it does. I’m merely saying we shouldn’t exclude anything prematurely.
John Mercer stops by a little later, and I wait until he’s comfortably settled before asking whether Pandora has mentioned sugar recently. He stares at me for several seconds before saying no. I tell him to think about it. He says he doesn’t need to. I suggest she might have mentioned baking, coffee, dessert, or anything involving granulated sweeteners, at which point John looks past me toward Pandora, who’s sitting at the table working on her laptop. Without even looking up, she says, “Don’t help him.” John nods immediately. I point at him and ask what that was. He asks what I mean. “The nod,” I say. John explains that Pandora told him not to help me, so he agreed not to help me. Technically that makes sense, but I’m still uncomfortable with how quickly the two of them established cooperation.
I sit down across from Pandora and remind myself that I’m not going to interrogate her. This is my wife. If Pandora says she needed sugar for something, then she needed sugar for something. That’s a perfectly reasonable explanation between two adults who trust each other. I drink my coffee and manage approximately thirty seconds of mature silence before asking what she’s working on. She stops typing and says, “Work.” I ask what kind of work. “My work.” I hesitate before asking whether it’s related to sugar. Pandora slowly looks up from the laptop while John, from somewhere behind me, makes the exhausted sound of a man reconsidering his decision to visit. Pandora says no. That’s good. We’ve eliminated one possibility.
The problem is that once you know somebody is withholding one small piece of information, you begin noticing everything else. Over the next hour Pandora checks her phone twice, goes into the bedroom and closes the door for approximately six minutes, returns carrying nothing, and later opens a kitchen cabinet, looks inside, and closes it again. None of these things are suspicious individually. Taken together, they are also not suspicious, and I’m trying very hard to remember that. Mr. Whiskers isn’t helping. Every time Pandora gets up, he seems to know where she’s going before I do. She heads toward the kitchen and he follows. She walks toward the bedroom and he watches from the hallway. It’s almost as though he’s tracking her movements, although admittedly it’s equally possible that he’s a cat who has correctly identified Pandora as a reliable source of food.
Eventually John leaves, but before going he tells me not to turn “the sugar thing” into another situation. I ask what he means by *another* situation, but he leaves without answering, thereby creating a second mystery while advising me not to investigate the first. I decide not to pursue it. That’s growth. By late afternoon I’ve almost forgotten about the sugar when someone knocks at the door. It’s Karen. Pandora gets there before I do, and the two of them talk quietly in the hallway. I’m in the living room, far enough away that I can’t hear everything they’re saying, which is fine because intentionally listening would be eavesdropping. I can, however, hear Karen say something containing the word “tonight.” Pandora laughs, Karen says something else, and then Pandora says very clearly, “He doesn’t know.”
I freeze. Mr. Whiskers is sitting beside me, and even his ears rotate toward the hallway. I look at him. He looks at me. Now we’re dealing with evidence. When Pandora comes back inside, I ask what I don’t know. She stops, and Karen, still standing outside, makes the catastrophic mistake of smiling. Pandora looks at Karen, Karen’s smile disappears, and Pandora asks what I’m talking about. I tell her I heard her say, “He doesn’t know.” She claims she said, “You don’t know.” I point out that this is actually worse. Pandora sighs, closes the door, and walks past me. Suddenly the sugar isn’t random anymore. The phone isn’t random. The closed bedroom door isn’t random. Karen isn’t random. Something is happening.
I remain calm and ask what I don’t know. Pandora says, “Nothing,” which is unfortunate because nobody in recorded history has ever successfully used the word *nothing* in that particular situation. I stare at her until she finally says, “You’re going to ruin it.” That changes everything. I ask what I’m going to ruin, but she refuses to answer. I ask whether it involves John. No. Karen? No. Mrs. Jenkins? No. Dave? Pandora looks genuinely confused and asks why Dave would possibly be involved. That’s an excellent question, actually, so I remove Dave from the investigation. Finally I ask whether Mr. Whiskers is involved. Pandora laughs so hard that even the cat looks offended.
For the rest of the afternoon I attempt to behave normally, which turns out to be extremely difficult once you’ve confirmed the existence of an undisclosed event. Every sound acquires meaning. Every cabinet opening has context. Every time Pandora checks her phone, information is potentially being exchanged. Then she walks into the kitchen carrying a grocery bag and tells me not to come in. That’s when I know beyond reasonable doubt that an operation is underway. I stand outside the kitchen and ask what she’s doing. She says nothing. I point out that I can hear noises. She tells me kitchens have noises. A few seconds later I hear what sounds unmistakably like a mixer. Pandora insists I didn’t hear a mixer. Then I smell vanilla, and the entire conspiracy begins collapsing under the weight of its own deliciousness.
I ask if she’s baking something. There’s a long silence, followed by the kitchen door opening. Pandora stands there with flour on her shirt and the expression of somebody whose surprise has just been destroyed by a man incapable of ignoring displaced condiments. Behind her, sitting on the counter, is a partially frosted cake. I look at the cake, then at Pandora, and suddenly remember that tomorrow is the anniversary of the day we first met. The revelation arrives all at once, along with the uncomfortable realization that I absolutely should have remembered this sooner.
Pandora explains that Karen was helping her plan a surprise. The sugar moved because Pandora had measured ingredients earlier and forgot to put the jar back. She’d been checking her phone because Karen was helping with the recipe. She’d closed the bedroom door because she’d hidden a gift in there. When she told Karen that I didn’t know, she meant exactly what it sounded like: I wasn’t supposed to know because it was a surprise. Every clue I’d noticed was real. Every observation had been accurate. My conclusion had merely been catastrophically wrong.
I look at the cake and then back at Pandora. “So you *were* keeping secrets from me.” She stares at me for a moment before admitting that, technically, yes, she was. I don’t have enough time to enjoy this victory before she picks up a dish towel and throws it at my head. I catch it, which I consider an impressive display of reflexes under hostile conditions. Mr. Whiskers wanders into the kitchen and immediately sits beside Pandora. Of course he does. I point at him and tell Pandora he clearly knew what was happening. She warns me not to interrogate the cat. I assure her I’m not interrogating anybody, then crouch beside Mr. Whiskers and quietly ask how long he’s known. Pandora orders me out of the kitchen.
I retreat to the couch smiling because, technically, I was right about the most important thing. Pandora was keeping a secret. It happened to be a good secret involving cake rather than whatever sprawling domestic conspiracy my brain had begun constructing, but I’m willing to accept that as a favorable outcome. I decide the investigation is officially closed and settle back into the couch feeling unusually pleased with my restraint. A few minutes later, Mr. Whiskers walks past carrying a small piece of blue ribbon in his mouth. I watch him disappear down the hallway and remember that Pandora said she’d hidden *a* gift in the bedroom. Singular. The ribbon is blue. The shopping bag she carried into the bedroom earlier was red.
I stare at the hallway for several seconds before reminding myself that I’ve learned my lesson. There is no reason to investigate. Pandora has already explained everything. The sugar mystery is solved, the conspiracy doesn’t exist, and whatever Mr. Whiskers is doing with that ribbon is almost certainly none of my business. I lean back against the couch and force myself to relax. Five seconds pass. Then ten. Somewhere down the hallway, Mr. Whiskers knocks something over.
I get up.
I’m only going to look.
