The text read like an official notice from a building manager announcing that the water would be shut off for scheduled maintenance between noon and four. My own home had apparently become nothing more than a convenient resource for her to manage without my input.
I stood there in aisle twelve of the Charlotte Walmart, surrounded by displays of batteries and impulse buy phone chargers, while a restless kid behind me argued with his mother about candy. The cashier kept calling for the next guest with the exhausted patience of someone who had been standing behind that register for six long hours.
“I am not currently at home,” I typed back to her, though what I really meant was that I was not available for this intrusion. I wanted to tell her no, and I wanted to explain that I was not giving up the first quiet weekend I had earned in a month just to help her.
I was tired of being treated like an empty conference room rather than a man who needed his privacy after a divorce that had already split his entire life down the middle. My sister replied in less than ten seconds to tell me that my absence was perfect because she was planning on using her spare key anyway.