She could not remember the last time they had a conversation that was not interrupted. Not by their phones. Not by their children. Not by their work. Not by the endless, relentless demands of daily life. They were together, but they were not together. They were in the same house, but they were in different worlds. They were married, but they were strangers. They were partners, but they were ships passing in the night, waving from a distance, too exhausted to stop, too busy to connect, too overwhelmed to remember why they had chosen each other in the first place.

She loved him. She knew he loved her. But somewhere along the way, between the careers and the children and the chores and the bills, between the deadlines and the obligations and the commitments and the responsibilities, they had lost each other. They had become roommates. They had become co-managers of a household. They had become co-parents of children. They had become partners in logistics. But they had stopped being lovers. They had stopped being friends. They had stopped being the two people who had once looked at each other and seen their future.