" Just pick up the pieces," he mumbled to himself. She won't be home for another two hours and I have time to figure out what to do.
He stared at the pieces of her most treasured vase and slowly bent down to pick up one piece at a time and laid them under the table out of sight. He never knew when she might come home early; if there weren't any customers to please, she sometimes surprised him.

Now that the pile was complete, he had to figure out what to do to assemble the pieces back into a vase that would look like new. Hmm, glue was what came to mind and hastily he ran to the junk drawer to get it. Luckily, there was a whole tube because the vase was big, he would need it all.
It took, what seemed like forever, to glue each piece into each other to make the vase whole again. A puzzle is what it was. He loved puzzles, so no worries. Finally, all pieces were glued and he congratulated himself on a job well done. Unless she looked closely, she would never know that it had been shattered. Then on the other hand, no one ever sent flowers so she didn't really ever use it.
He wiped the worry sweat off his forehead and sat in front of the T.V. with a magazine, just waiting for her to come home. He tried to look comfortable and not guilty.

Just in time, she walked through the door smiling and to his chagrin she held a huge bouquet of flowers. Picking up the vase, she exclaimed, "What happened?"