A feeling I can't name spreads through me—not anger, more like grief. Every single day, my wife must wake up expecting this life to be ripped away from her.
Not wanting to get caught snooping, I quickly zip the bag back up and leave it at exactly the same angle and in the same position as when I found it.
I’m heading back toward my office when the bathroom door opens, and Saoirse takes a few steps forward, followed by a cloud of steam.
The hallway is narrow—built in 1920, when people were apparently smaller, or at least someone wearing only a towel wasn’t expected to share a corridor with someone whose shoulders span half the available space.
The geometry is awkward, and we both stop.
She’s close enough that I can see a water droplet trailing from her hair down her temple to her jawline.
The awkwardness continues. Then, we both turn sideways slightly and attempt to shimmy past one another.
My arm brushes hers. Bare skin—she’s in a towel, I’m in a T-shirt—and the quarter-second of contact sends a jolt up my arm that registers in my teeth. Her skin is warm.
She looks up at me. The height difference is extreme in this space. Her chin lifts. Her face angles up to find my eyes, and the movement exposes her throat. The line of it. The hollow where her pulse undulates quickly.
Her lips part, but no words emerge.
My hand twitches at my side. Whether it’s trying to move toward her or away from her, I don’t know.
Finally, she slips past, and I hear her exhale—a long, controlled release, the sound of someone resetting their nervous system after a near-miss.
I remain in the hallway, the warmth of her still surrounding me, with my jaw locked hard enough to ache.
An hour later, I find her standing at the kitchen counter with a glass of water she isn't drinking. I pull an envelope from my jacket pocket and set it on the counter beside her, then put a credit card down next to it.
She stares at both without touching them.
"That's twelve hundred dollars cash," I say. “There’s plenty more whenever you need it. The card has a fifty thousand dollar a month limit."
Her gaze comes up to mine, confused but guarded.
"I don't need?—"
“Maybe not.” I hold her gaze and keep my voice level. "Take it anyway. You're my wife. My wife doesn't walk around this city without money. It's not up for negotiation."
She looks down at the envelope. Her fingers don't move toward it.
I tap the card once. Twice. "If something happens to me, that card keeps working. The account it draws from is in your name as well as mine. You could walk out that door right now and never come back, and it would still work."
Something moves across her face—not warmth, not gratitude. A sharp, rapid reassessment, the way a chess player looks at a board when a piece moves somewhere they didn't predict.
"I'm not trying to buy you," I say, because I can see the thought forming. "You're already my wife. I’m simply explaining the reality of our situation.”
Her hand moves, slowly, and her fingers close around the envelope.
She doesn't say thank you. She doesn't say anything.
But after she picks up the credit card too, I leave.
In the hallway, I stop to look back. She's still at the counter, and she's looking at the money and the credit card with an expression I've never seen on her face before.
Not relief. She's looking at it the way a person looks at something they've stopped believing existed.
I move before she notices me watching, striding up the stairs and into my room, where I pull out my phone and open my grocery app.
I select protein bars, two types, the dense kind. Peanut butter, the large jar. Mixed nuts. Crackers, three varieties. Dried fruit. Jerky. Individual oat packets. Shelf-stable items that keep well, travel well, and don't need refrigeration. I add them all to my standing order, and close the app.
