Lately, everything about my husband seemed off. Patrick, usually an open book to me, had become a mystery. He went from not caring about his phone when we were together to being glued to it, guarding it like a precious secret.
I’ve been eating alone most nights because Patrick has been shut up in our study, claiming to work, when in reality, I could hear him whispering on the phone.
“What’s going on, Patrick?” I asked him after enduring the same cold routine for two weeks.
“Work is demanding, Jane,” he said, maintaining eye contact. “It’s going to settle down soon, I promise.”
Usually, Patrick would sit down with me and discuss his work, but he retreated to the study with a mug of coffee instead.
It wasn’t just the distance between us—it was the silence, the unspoken words that filtered through our home.
A few days after that conversation, Patrick told me to use his car for work.
