The night my wife mentioned her high school reunion, I barely lifted my eyes from my phone.
She stood in the kitchen doorway, the light catching the edge of the invitation in her hands. There was a hopeful softness in her smile—one I didn’t truly see until it disappeared. Without thinking, without cruelty but full of arrogance, I spoke.
“Do you really want to go?” I said lightly. “I mean… it might be awkward. You’re just a stay-at-home mom now. You might feel out of place.”
She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t argue. She simply nodded once, folded the invitation carefully, and placed it in the drawer with the bills and instruction manuals—things quietly set aside.
Something shifted that night.
In the days that followed, our home felt hollow in a way I couldn’t name. The routines continued—meals cooked, lunches packed, laundry folded—but the warmth was gone. Conversations became functional. Necessary. Short. I told myself it was temporary, that she’d get over it, unaware that what I had dismissed as a careless comment had struck something far deeper.
