Honey, are those dark circles under your eyes?

Our flight from New York was delayed last night, so we finally walked in the door at about midnight. We set down our bags and collapsed on the couch.

I stared off into space for awhile. Then I happened to glance over at hubby.

A black, purplish looking bruise had formed underneath his eye, starting from the corner of his eye and tracing underneath his eyelid.

I frowned.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“Huh?”

“What’s wrong with your eye?”

He shrugged.

“You have something on your eye!” I said, a little panicked now. “It looks like a bruise. But it wasn’t there before. And — ” I peered at his other eye, where a faint smudge of black had bloomed, and now appeared to be spreading. “You have it on your other eye too!”

He leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes. “It’s probably nothing. I’m tired.”

“No, it’s not nothing! This has never happened to you before. Those look… really bad.”

Suddenly it hit me that maybe Crayton’s blood had gone sour. Maybe he’d stretched himself to the point of exhaustion, and these two bruises were signs that he cannot live this crazy, work- and travel-all-the-time lifestyle anymore. Maybe he was about to have internal bleeding from the exhaustion, and what was I supposed to do?

Then he spoke.

“You know what?” he said. “I was reading the newspaper. It’s probably just newsprint.”

He raised his harm and rubbed his bruised eye. I winced. But sure enough, the black smudges disappeared.

“You know how I rub my eyes all the time.”

I frowned again. Really? That was it?

“I don’t know…” I said.

“I’m fine.”

Newsprint. Of course. He’d been reading The New York Times on the entire plane ride home. We sat there in silence, and the flutters disappeared from my stomach. My blood-gone-sour theory dissolved, dusted onto the imaginary newspaper pages that now filled my head.

I gave him a tiny smile. He smiled, too.

“Sorry,” I said, feeling absolutely lame. “But really, you never know….”