The one person in my life who had never been wrong about anybody told me she had had my husband looked at, and I shut her down in three words, because I was tired and sad and I did not want to be the woman whose family thought her husband was a wrong ‘un.
And there is a second one, smaller and worse.
In the June of 2023 I saw a message on his phone. It said: done, 8.5 tomorrow. Nothing else.
I asked him what it was and he said work, and I said fine.
Eight point five. The fourteen transfers ran between four thousand and eight thousand five hundred. There is a transfer of eight thousand five hundred dated the ninth of June, 2023.
I had it in my hand, on his phone, in my own kitchen.
And I did not ask twice — because asking twice in that house cost more than the answer was ever worth, and I had learned that, and adjusted to it, and called the adjustment keeping the peace.
