Blood and Ink

Chapter 1

Marvin Hadley wakes to the smell of breakfast cooking and his wife's humming coming from the kitchen down the hall. He lays in the bed for a moment letting the aromas and sound fill his senses as he slowly wakes up to the mid morning sunlight peaking through the curtains in the bedroom. He sat up in the bed and turned to get up. The satin sheets slid from his naked body like water. The silky feeling on his skin filled him with a temporary warmth deep in his bones. He reached out to grab his glasses off the bedside table. After setting them on his nose, the fog of sleep began to clear. He noticed that there were some papers on the table that were under his glasses. He glanced at them but couldn't make out what they said.

"I need some coffee," he said rubbing his eyes and blinking.

He stood up and walked to the large red oak wardrobe. He opened it and began picking his clothes for the day. He grabbed a black button-up shirt, black pin-striped pants, purple suspenders, emerald green tie, and a light beige waist coat. After putting everything on, he assessed himself in the mirror and adjusted his tie. He grabbed a pair of purple argyle socks and sat down on the edge of the bed to slip them on. Reaching under the bed he grabbed his black wingtip shoes and put them both on before tying them. As he was tying the last one he noticed that his wedding ring was missing and his heart caught in his chest.

He stood up, as if an electric shock had hit him. The anxiety in his body making him increasingly frantic as he searched the whole of the bed, turning over the sheets and pillows. He stooped down to check under the bed, with no luck. He searched high and low across the room. Each second that passed caused the tightness in his chest to increase. After searching everywhere twice, he finally stood up, stepped back, and took a deep breath.

"I'll just ask Claudia if she's seen it," he said as he took a few more deep breaths to try to calm himself.

Marvin stepped into the hall and was greeted with the sweet mixture of Claudia's humming and the smell of breakfast again. This created some sense of ease in his anxiety plagued mind. He walked down the hall, passing by the various pictures and things that were hanging on the walls or that decorated the house. Some of them he had trouble making details out on, even after rubbing his eyes. A thought crossed his mind that he must be sleepier than he thought if his eyes were taking this long to adjust.

"Claudia, love, have you seen my wedding ring? I think it must have fallen off somehow while I was asleep but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I was wondering if maybe you found it when you woke up, this morning," he asked, all while rubbing the part of his finger where the ring usually sits.

Claudia didn't respond. She continued to hum and work on breakfast. She already had a quite the spread already cooked up. The island counter was covered with plates of fruits, eggs cooked in various ways, pancakes and toast, sausage and bacon. Marvin took in the massive spread both enticed and bewildered at the amount of food that his wife and cooked. How long had she been up to have cooked and prepared all of this food?

Marvin finally managed to peel his eyes away from the massive amount of food and they found themselves on his beautiful wife. The mid morning sun was cascading in through the window above the stove, almost casting a halo around Claudia. His mind began to wonder back to the days when they first met and for a brief moment, he put his missing wedding ring out of his mind. He crossed the kitchen and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and planting a warm kiss on her cheek while he took in the smells of whatever she had currently in the frying pan.

"What's possessed you to want to cook so much food, babe?" he whispered into her ear, pulling her tighter into his warm embrace, "Is there some special occasion I don't know about?"

She leaned her head back into Marvin's shoulder. The smell of her shampoo was intoxicating. A faint mixture of wild flowers and fruit.

"Well I figured after such a wonderful night, last night, I would treat my man to a wonderful breakfast to thank him," She said softly, all the while keeping her eyes on the frying pan.