“I love that it’s not fireworks every five seconds.”
“Steady flame?” I say.
She smiles.
“Steady flame.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
EMMA
The house is quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that makes you panic. The earned kind.
The dishwasher hums softly. The clock ticks. Somewhere upstairs, one of the kids turns over in bed. The night holds us without demanding anything.
I lean against the kitchen counter and let myself stand still.
A year ago, I couldn’t stand still. If I stopped moving, I started thinking. If I started thinking, I started tallying. Who got more sleep. Who carried more weight. Who sacrificed more. It was exhausting. And the worst part? I didn’t even realise I was keeping score. I just knew I felt alone. Not physically. But emotionally. Like I was orbiting a life that used to feel like mine.
Dan comes in from the living room, rubbing the back of his neck. He’s just finished locking up, checking doors the way he does now without being asked.
Without me reminding him.
“Kids are finally down,” he says quietly.
“Miracle.”
He smiles.
There was a time that smile would have softened me instantly and also annoyed me at the same time. How could he look so calm when I felt like I was drowning?
Now I see it differently. He wasn’t calm. He was scared. And I wasn’t angry. I was shrinking. It’s strange how long it can take to name something.
I turn, leaning back against the counter.
“Do you ever think about how close we were?” I ask.
He pauses. “Yeah.”
“Sometimes I look at us now,” I continue, “and it feels like we’re a completely different couple.”
“We are,” he says simply.
We are.
The version of us that thought love would carry everything automatically? Gone. The version of us that avoided hard conversations because we didn’t want to rock the boat? Gone. The version of us that confused intimacy with obligation? Gone.
We didn’t just fix cracks. We rebuilt foundations.
I move toward the sink and rinse a glass slowly.
“When you said I didn’t contribute,” I say, softer now, not accusatory, “I think that’s when something really broke in me.”
He winces. “I know.”
“I don’t think it was the words,” I continue. “It was what they represented. That I wasn’t visible. That the stuff I did didn’t count because it didn’t come with a payslip.”
