The Penultimate Paragraph

Janice walked into the room and immediately felt that something was amiss.  The shades were drawn down, shutting out the mid-afternoon sunlight that generally poured through the large windows at the head of the bed.  Very unusual.  The master bedroom was perched at the top of the house like the jewel of a crown, so would-be peeping toms could see little more than the ceiling from street level.  As a result, the curtains were generally left open during the day.  The room had a slightly musky smell to it: her husband’s fragrance, combined with sweat, and . . . something else.  Tom shouldn’t have been home yet.  She flipped on the overhead light and noticed that the scarlet comforter duvet cover was rumpled up from the foot of the bed, revealing brown sheets-Tom’s choice, not hers.  She smiled as she remembered the argument over the sheets: Tom had chosen the brown ones to put on their wedding registry because she kept pestering him to have an opinion about something-anything.  She walked to the closed bathroom door across the room, placed a hand on the cool, brass knob.  So Tom had chosen the ugliest sheets he could find to make some point that was lost on her.  Janice placed her head against the bathroom door to listen.  She didn’t change the registry and, sure enough, somebody bought them the brown sheets.  It was something that they still laughed about, eight years later.  Janice knocked, no answer.  She felt an unexplainable buzzing in her head.  She turned the knob.  She felt flush, and too warm.  She opened the door.