Free You Don't Know Me by Susan May Warren

They filled the Ford with a freshness, a grace, that his marriage suddenly needed.
    Truth was, Annalise had been acting remote, even jumpy, since her uncle arrived yesterday. He’d nearly startled her out of her robe when he found her at the window this morning, watching Frank pick up apples in his mother’s yard, a strange look on her face, and when Nathan came up beside her, she gave a small yelp.
    Very reminiscent of those first years of their marriage, when he’d walk into a room and she’d spook like he might be a bandit. Or worse.
    “Sorry,” he’d said, and she gave him a tepid smile as though still returning from wherever her thoughts had taken her.
    Maybe across the street, where her uncle was hitting on his mother.
    Yes. He saw the way his mother laughed. The way Frank took the basket from her hands, Mr. Chivalrous. It tightened something inside him.
    He’d have to keep his eye on the guy. Maybe Frank had put Annalise on edge.
    Still, it was Nathan’s job to fix it.
    He pulled up to their ranch house and didn’t bother to park the car in the garage. Her SUV took up the other side of the driveway. He hoped to catch her in the shower, getting ready for the luncheon. Maybe even rekindle some of the old, impromptu moments. He missed their closeness, but that’s what happened when you lived a busy life.
    He stepped past the pumpkins lining the steps, the pot of red chrysanthemums on the bent twig bench on the porch. She’d hung a wreath made of fall leaves and grapevine on the door.
    Nathan recognized the pungent smell of fresh paint the moment he opened the door. Oh no.
    Toeing off his shoes, he walked across the Berber carpet into the kitchen, then down the stairs to the basement. “Lise!”
    He’d blame Uncle Frank for this sudden urge toward home renovation. Not that Annalise needed much of an excuse. His wife thrived on remodeling. She’d single-handedly refaced the old cupboards in the kitchen, turning it into a French Renaissance style, and retiled the backsplash not only in the kitchen, but in both main floor bathrooms. She’d repainted their bedroom twice and each of the children’s rooms three times as they grew out of Thomas the Tank Engine, Bob the Builder, Dora the Explorer, and then through the Marvel Comic stages until finally letting them choose their own themes. With supervision, of course.
    In the family room, she’d painted the walls red and a burnt-yellow faux stucco and replaced the carpet with Berber. He couldn’t count how many times they’d resurfaced the driveway, and he never thought he’d survive digging up and re-laying the brick walk or the patio pavers in the backyard.
    Sure, the house dated from the early fifties, and the foundationhad a few cracks, but she was always slapping paint over it, as if she’d never quite get it right.
    Not that he minded. But it all cost money.
    More, it wasn’t like they’d ever sell the place. Or leave Deep Haven. Their life was here, in this small town, in this old ranch-style house. They had to make the best of it.
    But for Annalise, it had to be better. Perfect.
    Down in the basement, she had draped plastic across the carpet and had nearly finished covering the brown paneling with what looked like eggshell-white paint. She wore one of his old sweatshirts, her hair tied up in a high ponytail, protected with a blue bandanna. The nip of the October breeze snuck into the room through the open windows, tempering the odor of paint.
    “Lise, now? You’re painting now?”
    She stepped off the footstool, holding a roller. “Have you ever noticed how dark it is down here? And those old sofas—they stink, you know.”
    “Yes, like Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and sweaty boys playing Xbox. Trust me, we’re not replacing them until after our children are out of the house.”
    She set the roller in the pan. “I know. I just . . . I can’t bear to look at this dark paneling one more second.”
    He pulled the flowers out from behind his back.