Derek spent weeks in his shed building me a “surprise” for our tenth anniversary. I expected something romantic; instead, he unveiled a bizarre cage with my gift locked inside. As I tried to free it, I uncovered my husband had been keeping a secret I couldn’t ignore.
Three weeks before our tenth anniversary, Derek came home with an armload of plywood and threaded metal rods. “What on earth is that for?” I asked as he lugged it through the kitchen. He beamed at me as he shifted the load in his arms.
“It’s for the anniversary gift I’m making you. It’s going to blow your mind!”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Derek, the man who usually gave me gift vouchers or practical gifts like a blender or Roomba, was making me a gift?
I was washing dishes when I heard the power saw whining outside. The sound made my teeth ache, and I couldn’t stop wondering what he was making for me. Derek was handy with woodwork.
He’d once made his mother a cedar chest, and he’d built a display case for his little golf club awards and the sports memorabilia he collected. Maybe he was making me a jewelry box? No… those metal rods had been nearly a yard long.
What could they be for? When we sat down to dinner that evening, I tried to get him to give me a clue, but he brushed me off. “It’s a surprise, Clara.
You’ll have to wait and see,” he said. On the morning of our anniversary, Derek called me into the living room. His voice had that theatrical quality he used when he thought he was being clever.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “No peeking.”
I heard him rustling around, moving something that sounded heavy. My heart fluttered with anticipation.
This was it, the moment our marriage turned a corner. “Okay, open them.”
An old bed sheet covered something the size of a coffee table, but taller. With a dramatic flourish, Derek yanked the sheet away.
I stared in disbelief. It looked like an oversized flower press gone completely insane. Two heavy plywood slabs sat clamped together with those yard-long threaded rods sticking out the top.
Each rod was secured with a stack of what looked like 20 or 30 nuts. Nested between the wooden slabs like a prisoner was a gift-wrapped box. “What is this?” The words came out as a whisper.
Derek playfully spun one of the nuts with his finger, that stupid grin still plastered on his face. “It’s your gift! But to get it out, you’ll have to work for a change.”
For a change?
Like I hadn’t been doing most of the housework, kept up a part-time job, and done all the emotional heavy lifting every single day of our ten-year marriage. Now, I had to work for my anniversary gift, too. Before I could ask what kind of sick joke this was, he kissed my cheek and grabbed his golf bag from the closet.
“I’ll be back just in time to see your face when you open it,” he said, already heading for the door. And then he left. He actually went golfing on our anniversary and left me standing there with this monstrous contraption squatting in our living room like some medieval torture device.
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