And somehow, that made it more unsettling.
He simply said things as though there were no other possible answer.
If I needed a new coat, he bought it.
If I went to the pharmacy, he paid.
If I wanted to visit our daughter, he filled the car with gas.
From the outside, everything probably looked completely normal.
But I almost never had money in my own hands.
One day, our daughter, Lisa, asked me casually,
“Mom, what do you spend your pension on?”
I stared into my coffee.
“Household expenses.”
It was a lie.
The truth was, I did not even know where the money was going. Then one afternoon, my friend Carol asked me to go
shopping with her. She spotted a beautiful scarf.
“This would look so good on you.”
It cost only thirty-two dollars.
I held it in my hands for a few seconds before quietly putting it back.
“I don’t need it.”
Carol looked at me.
“You don’t have any money with you?”
It was an ordinary question.
But I felt so ashamed, as if she had shouted my secret across the entire store.
That evening, for the first time, I confronted Robert.
“I want to keep part of my pension from now on.”
He did not even lower his newspaper.
