My husband kissed our feverish children goodbye, packed his suitcase, and flew to the Mediterranean with his mother. Two days later, one number in our bank account turned my blood cold.
The humidifier rattled softly in the corner of the nursery, the only steady sound in a house that felt unbearably heavy that Tuesday evening. I held a cool cloth against Sam’s forehead while Ellie coughed in her sleep across the hallway.
Eight years of marriage.
Two sick children.
And a husband whose phone had been buzzing for the last forty minutes.
I already knew who was calling.
David’s voice floated upstairs, gentle and patient in a way I had not heard him use with me in months.
“I know, Mom,” David said softly.
Brenda’s voice carried through the speaker just clearly enough for me to catch several words.
“After everything I gave up for you, I won’t spend my last years sitting alone while everyone else has a family.”
David rubbed his forehead.
“You’re not alone.”
“Not yet,” she whispered. “But one day I will be.”
It had always been like that.
David’s father died when he was sixteen, and from then on, Brenda constantly reminded him that the two of them only had each other. Every birthday, holiday, and major life decision came with the same quiet warning.
“After everything I’ve sacrificed for you,” she’d say, “I hope I still come first.”
At some point, David stopped recognizing it as guilt and began mistaking it for love.
I closed my eyes.
Sam whimpered, and I soothed him while brushing the damp hair away from his temple.
When David and I met in college, he used to hide sticky notes in my textbooks. Small drawings. Terrible jokes. Once, he drove three hours through a snowstorm just to bring me soup.
Now he could not walk fifteen feet upstairs to check whether our son’s fever had gone down.
I carried Sam’s untouched cup of juice downstairs.
David stood against the kitchen counter, laughing quietly into his phone.
“I’ll call you back in a bit, okay? Love you too.”
He ended the call and looked at me as though he had only just remembered I was there.
“How are they?” he asked.
“Sam’s at a hundred and two. Ellie threw up again.”
He opened the refrigerator.
That was all.
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