Three days after my father passed away, I walked into the kitchen at ten-thirty on a Wednesday morning and found my husband drinking coffee in his sweatpants.
I stopped in the doorway.
For most of our twenty-two-year marriage, Mark had left for work before eight, travel mug in one hand and company phone in the other, usually complaining about some distributor who had decided its problem could not wait.
Seeing him at the kitchen table in the middle of a weekday felt immediately wrong.
“Why are you home?”
Mark looked up from his laptop.
“Morning to you, too.”
“It’s Wednesday.”
“I know what day it is.”
For half a second, I assumed he had taken time off because of Dad. Walter Hail had been gone barely seventy-two hours, and I had spent the morning arguing with a florist about whether a man who considered decorative pillows a personal insult would have wanted something called Heavenly Garden at his funeral.
Then I noticed Mark’s company phone was gone.
“Did something happen at work?”
He closed the laptop.
“I quit.”
I stared at him.
“You what?”
“I resigned.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
He took another sip of coffee.
“Clare, don’t make it sound like I joined a cult.”
Normally I might have laughed. Mark had always been good at using humor to soften uncomfortable conversations.
That morning, I didn’t.
“Why would you quit your job yesterday?”
He leaned back.
“Because I don’t see the point anymore.”
“The paycheck is usually the point.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, Mark. I really don’t.”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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