He squeezed my shoulder and walked away. But I could see he wasn’t convinced. I spent the rest of the reception making small talk and pretending everything was wonderful while my marriage crumbled around me like a house of cards in a hurricane.
I left early, claiming a headache that wasn’t entirely false, and drove home to our empty mansion where Richard’s absence felt like a third person in every room. Sunday arrived with still no sign of Richard, and I spent the day moving through our house like a ghost haunting her own life. I cleaned rooms that were already spotless, organized closets that didn’t need organizing, and tried not to check my phone every 30 seconds for messages that never came.
By evening, I was alternating between worry and rage in five-minute intervals. At 7:00 p.m., I heard his key in the lock like the sound of impending doom. “Where have you been?” I asked as he walked into our designer kitchen, trying to keep my voice level.
“Working. I told you that.”
He opened our stainless steel refrigerator and pulled out a beer, not making eye contact like I was a stranger he was trying to avoid. “For 36 hours straight?
It’s a complicated deal, Amber. You wouldn’t understand the intricacies involved in highle business negotiations.”
There it was again, the subtle dismissal wrapped in condescension. The implication that I was too simple to grasp his important adult world.
“Try me.”
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