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I know I'm coming in late here, however, I'll toss a completely different take on this.

When he kisses his "wife" each morning, it's only a picture. She died a year ago on this day. He's crying because it's the 1 year anniversary of her death.

My solution:

The building he lives in has a 13th floor.


However, this morning he noticed the 13th was missing, it went from the 14th floor directly to the 12th floor.


The only possibility? The labyrinth builder was superstitious of the number 13 so his copy of the building did not include it.


The man is Dom Cobb, and he is in a dream. His wife, Mal Cobb, committed suicide years ago. The error in the building has made him aware of the dream.

Inception!

Maybe

He poisoned her morning coffee.

The husband and wife have been living under assumed names, on the run from the CIAfia and in possession of a briefcase containing documents of earth-shattering significance. It's absolutely clear that if the CIAfia find where they're holed up, they won't engage in negotiation: they'll just kill them and make off with the documents.

The couple's problem is that they've lost contact with the agency they're supposed to hand the briefcase to. They fear their usual contact has come to harm. All they can do is wait and hope that someone else in the agency knows the procedures for making contact. Husbie nips out every morning to check for the chalk mark. He always uses the proper tradecraft, so it takes him about 3 hours. And when he gets back, he always checks on exiting the lift that his wife has put a flowerpot in the pre-arranged place. If she hasn't, that will only mean one thing: she's dead and the CIAfia have taken the briefcase. In that event, he's offski: he'll turn sharp left, pay no more attention to the front door of the flat, and walk down the stairway to floor 29.

Leaving is as tense as arriving. The guys looking for them aren't gunslinging cowboys. Nobody's chances are ever 100% in this game. If they can, they'll improve their odds by entering the flat when the wife's alone. But they won't waste time. After all, when the husband goes out, the opposition could in principle make contact with him within a minute or so and he'll lead them straight up to the flat. So if possible the CIAfia will go in and kill his wife and take the briefcase as soon as he's gone out, when he's been in the lift for only a few seconds.

So every morning, she texts him. She listens for the lift door opening and closing and then she sends a text within 15 seconds. She's a professional; she doesn't forget. If she doesn't send the text, there's only one possible meaning - she's dead.

He's a professional too, but that doesn't mean he's not scared. He was trained to control his fear. He looks calmly at his watch. Five seconds. Ten seconds. By the time the lift reaches floor 12, thirty seconds have elapsed. They've killed her. Cry a tear. The CIAfia have got the documents. On to the next stage.

(He didn't receive the communication. That's the point. Let's say the man's not in danger, because the only reason the CIAfia would kill whoever's looking after the briefcase at the moment of collection is to prevent harm coming to the documents.)

Possibly

His wife is ill and needs a certain medication daily at exactly the same time. On this day, the man forgot to give her the medication and remembered once he saw the number 12 in the elevator. Perhaps 12 is involved in her dosage.

My solution is that

Early every morning, the man's wife wakes up, puts coffee in the coffee pot, prepares their lunches for the day, and then goes back to bed for a couple hours. Today, she passed away in her sleep briefly before her spouse awoke. Her body was still warm when he kissed her.


The man got hungry in the elevator and discovered that his lunchbox was empty. Because his wife had been recently diagnosed with a terminal illness, it was reasonable to believe that she had died rather than slept-in.

The 18-story power cord from his wife's life support system popped out of the DC-AC power converter attached to the car battery in his back pack and he began to cry. Obviously.

Maybe

The wife committed pre-planned suicide due to a lengthy agonizing illness. She didn't want him there. By the time the elevator got to the 12th floor he knew she was dead.

Their building was old, with an elevator entry protected by a rather flimsy metal grille that's not hard to push aside even when the elevator isn't there.

The wife suffered from chronic depression and would occasionally threaten to kill herself by jumping into the elevator shaft.

That morning, she did it.

Another variation of the same idea: their apartment was on the top floor, near the electrical hub for the building, which (again because the building was old and poorly maintained) was easily accessible.

The wife had depression and would threaten to kill herself by electrocuting herself through direct contact with the high voltage (5000V) transformer. That morning, she did it. This caused power in the building to go out; the elevator stopped, and the husband understood the reason why it was happening (because of the wife's constant suicide threats) and started to cry.

When he left he had set up the bomb, and when he reached the 12th floor he heard, or felt the shockwave of the explosion.

The wife's name was Old Yeller in this interpretation.

It is not specified that it is modern day, or present Earth.

It is also not specified if his realization came on his way home or on his way to work.

In the older days, elevators had an elevator operator. His wife was normally the operator, for the time that he got home from work and rode the elevator up. She was not there that day to give him the ride up, even though she was very loyal to her job. It took him until the 12th floor to reason out every other possibility of why she wouldn't be there.

Alternately, at the 12th floor there's a restaurant, and she met him there for dinner every evening, when he got home... she was not there to greet him when the doors opened on the 12th floor.

The elevator had glass walls. Upon reaching the 12th floor, he saw his wife's body fall past...

He has an affair with a woman. He plans to kill his wife. Poisoned her food and went. But felt repentant in the elevator as it is stuck due to power failure.