The morning my husband stayed home sick (for the first time ever) I didn’t expect to find a life-sized statue of him on our porch. He turned white, dragged it inside, and refused to explain. But when I read the note beneath it, everything I thought I knew shattered.
Jack never takes sick days — not when he had the flu last winter, not when he sliced his thumb cutting bagels, not even when his mother died. So I did a double-take when he said he planned to take a sick day that Tuesday morning. “I feel terrible,” he said, his voice thin and raspy.
“You don’t look good either,” I said, scraping burned toast into the trash. “Take some Tylenol and get back into bed. There’s soup in the pantry if you want some later.”
He nodded, and I dove back into the morning hustle of getting three kids ready for school.
Noah thundered down the stairs, backpack half-zipped, math worksheet clutched in his fist. Emma was still upstairs, probably staring at her phone instead of brushing her teeth like I’d asked her to do three times already. “Emma!” I hollered.
“We leave in 15 minutes!”
I packed lunches and hunted down Emma’s favorite hair tie while mentally rehearsing my notes for my work meeting at 9:30. Jack sat at the kitchen table looking like a strong wind might blow him over. “Promise me you’ll call the doctor if you aren’t feeling better by midday, okay?” I said, leaning over to feel his forehead.
A few minutes later, I finally herded all three kids toward the door, Noah complaining about his science project, Emma texting while walking, and little Ellie asking if we could get a pet snake for the 18th time that week. “No snakes,” I said automatically, reaching for the doorknob. When I opened the door, the world tilted sideways.
There, on our front porch, stood Jack. Except it wasn’t Jack — it was a life-sized clay statue of him with a smooth, white surface. It was perfect in every detail: the slight crook in his nose from when he broke it playing college basketball, the tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and even the small scar on his chin.
Ellie gasped. “Is that…
Dad?”
I didn’t reply; I was too lost in the surrealism of the moment. It was like our porch was the scene for a pop-up art installation… for my husband.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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