He climbed into bed with his phone, scrolling through LinkedIn comments and texts from coworkers and friends. I watched him type thank-yous with the focused tenderness he had not shown me in months. Within fifteen minutes, he was asleep, one hand still resting near the glowing screen.
I did not sleep.
I went downstairs.
The kitchen was dark except for the light above the stove. It cast a yellow pool over the counters, the sink, the school artwork magneted to the refrigerator, the stack of mail I had sorted after my shift the day before. There were still two coffee mugs in the sink because I had not gotten to them. Jason’s travel mug sat on the counter, stained ring beneath it. Ellie’s backpack hung from a chair.
I opened my laptop at the kitchen table.
The house was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of settling wood. Outside, somewhere down the block, a dog barked twice and stopped.
I logged into our bank account.
The joint account stared back at me in neat columns of numbers that told the truth better than either of us had.