“Where are your things?”
She hesitated. “The blue room.”
The blue room.
A guest room at the far end of the upstairs hallway, cold in winter, too bright in summer, mostly used for storage before I left. I had asked my mother to make sure Emma remained comfortable in our master suite. I had sent money for renovations, staff, security, personal expenses, anything she needed.
And my wife had been sleeping in the blue room.
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
My mother moved between us and the staircase.Track Pregnancy
“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “Emma can gather what she needs
seemed unfamiliar. There were new paintings I hadn’t chosen, new rugs, a glass display case filled with luxury watches. The door to our bedroom was closed.
Emma didn’t look at it.
She continued to the blue room.
When she opened the door, my chest tightened.
A narrow bed.
A small dresser.
Two suitcases.
A stack of folded clothes on a chair.
On the nightstand sat a framed photo of us from the year before everything changed. We were standing in front of our first restaurant, both of us younger, thinner, exhausted and happy. Emma had flour on her sleeve because she had been helping in the kitchen that day after our baker called out sick.
Beside the photo was a notebook, a bottle of lotion for cracked skin, and a little ceramic bird I remembered buying her at a roadside market in New Mexico.
All the life she had been
allowed to keep fit into one corner.
I couldn’t speak.
Emma crossed the room and began folding a sweater.
“Don’t,” I said, too sharply.
She stopped.
I took a breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I mean… you don’t have to pack like you’re sneaking out.”
She gave a small, sad smile. “I got used to moving quietly.”
I sat on the edge of the bed because my knees suddenly felt weak.
“How long?” I asked.
Emma looked at the sweater in her hands.
“At first, it wasn’t like this,” she said. “Not exactly.”
I waited.
“When you left, your mother said she wanted to help me adjust. She said the house was too much for one person to manage and that people would take advantage of me because I was inexperienced with money. I believed she meant well.”Trade Forex
