“Just stressed,” I said. “The interest rates are squeezing the residential market.”
Marilyn chewed her celery, the crisp snap of the stalk loud in the small room. She looked down at her lunch, then back up at me.
“He was with a younger woman,” she said. “They were at the juice counter. I thought she was one of your new marketing hires.”
My hand went to my gold band, twisting it slowly around my ring finger. My skin felt warm under the metal.
“We hired a consulting firm last month,” I said, keeping my pronunciation deliberate and clear. “To handle the digital rebranding.”
“She had a lot of folders,” Marilyn said. “They looked like they were arguing about a spreadsheet.”
“Daniel takes his spreadsheets very seriously,” I said.
“I am sure he does,” Marilyn said. She did not ask anything else, but she kept her eyes on her salad for the rest of the break.
The clock on the wall read ten past two, and my next patient was scheduled for knee rehab. I stood up and smoothed my scrubs, my fingers cold against the blue polyester fabric.
By nine that evening, the house was entirely quiet, save for the occasional creak of the floorboards. The scent of the floor wax had faded, replaced by the damp smell of rain starting outside.
Daniel was sitting at the oak desk in our small home office, his face illuminated by the bright blue glow of his laptop screen.
I stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. “Are you coming to bed soon?”
“I have to finish these projections,” he said, his fingers flying across the keyboard. “The bank wants the updated cash flow statement by Monday morning.”
“Let me help,” I said, stepping into the room. “I ran the payroll ledger for ten years, Daniel. I can balance the accounts in half the time.”
He shut the laptop lid halfway, blocking my view of the screen. The sudden movement cast his face into deep shadow.
“The system has changed since we moved to the cloud,” he said. “It is a different interface now.”
“I know how to use a cloud database,” I said.
