It was just past six on a Tuesday evening when he arrived home from work, a quiet suburb street dimming under the early dusk. As he stepped through the front door, I noticed immediately—a scratch across his chest, shallow but vivid against his shirt.
“It’s just a scratch,” he said, avoiding my eyes.
But it wasn’t just the mark; it was how he paused, hand hovering hesitantly, like he was weighing what to say or whether to say anything at all. The normal casualness of his return was replaced by a tightness, a subtle unease I hadn’t seen before.
Our daily life had settled into its usual rhythm, normal yet binding in the way routines can quietly hold tension beneath their surface. I got up early to make coffee and pack lunches, then headed to work at the local community center, managing schedules and dealing with constant demands.
He worked in sales, pressure mounting with quarterly targets looming. We often missed connecting over the evenings, these pockets of time slipping under the weight of tiredness and unwound frustration.
His boss had this cold way of speaking, a dismissiveness cloaked in professionalism that made errors, real or imagined, feel like personal failures. He favored others visibly, brushing off my husband’s concerns like they were minor distractions from productivity.
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