The sun was burning overhead, the street buzzing with tourists, but all we cared about was the taste of melting ice cream.
The kids laughed with sticky hands, my wife teased me about dripping vanilla down my shirt, and for a moment everything felt perfect—light, simple, carefree.
We posed for a stranger who offered to take our picture, cones raised like trophies, smiles so wide they almost looked staged.
But they weren’t. We were really that happy. Or at least we thought we were.
Looking back now, it’s impossible not to notice the small things.
The way my wife, Ana, held her smile just a second longer than usual, like she was trying to freeze it in place. The way my teenage son, Matei, was already turning away, more interested in his phone than the camera. The way my little girl, Sofia, clutched my arm like she was afraid to let go.
At the time, I brushed it off. Families are messy, I told myself. Happiness is never picture-perfect. Still, something about that day feels different in my memory, like it carried more weight than we realized.
The vacation had been my idea. I wanted to escape work stress, escape routine, escape the nagging sense that we were drifting apart. A week by the sea seemed like the cure. Sandcastles, seafood dinners, long walks along the pier—it all sounded like a reset button for us.
And for a while, it worked. The kids ran wild, Ana relaxed, and I pretended that life back home could wait. But underneath, small cracks were starting to show.
One night, as the kids slept, Ana and I sat on the balcony with a bottle of cheap wine. The waves were crashing below, the air sticky and warm. She looked at me, really looked, and asked, “Do you ever feel like we’re pretending?”
I laughed it off at first. “Pretending what?”
She shrugged, eyes on the dark water. “That everything’s okay. That we’re still the same people who fell in love.”
Her words stuck with me. I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that of course we were fine, but part of me knew she was right. Work had turned me into a ghost at home. Bills, deadlines, arguments—it all piled up. The love was still there, but buried under layers of exhaustion and distraction.
The next day, we carried on like nothing happened. That’s what families do. We bury uncomfortable truths under sandcastles and sunsets.