We married at twenty two. We raised two children and created a home filled with mismatched dining chairs and a dripping faucet we never quite managed to fix.
Richard flipped pancakes every Sunday morning. I arranged the spice rack alphabetically, though he could never remember where anything belonged.
We were happy.
Or at least, I believed we were. For 38 years, I believed we were deeply, effortlessly happy.
We were happy.
Then something shifted.
Richard grew distant — he moved through the house as if shadowed by something heavy. I would wake to find him asleep on the office couch behind a locked door, blaming it on work pressure.
He stopped asking about my day. Some nights I’d hear him coughing and sit on the other side of the door, my palm pressed against the wood.
“Richard?” I’d whisper.
But he never opened it.
