I used to think that if I ever broke down, it wouldn’t be loud or dramatic. No big scene. Just a quiet fading — into laundry cycles, back-to-school nights, clipped grocery lists, and the kind of marriage where one person learns how to vanish in plain sight.
My name’s Delaney. I’m 45, have two kids, a job at a dental clinic, and a husband named Caleb, who knows more bartenders than bedtime routines. Every time I asked him to find a stable job, he brushed it off with, “Babe, it’s just a phase. All great businessmen fall first.” Seven ventures. Seven crashes. And I was always the one breaking his fall.
Then Gloria died. My mother-in-law. The kind of woman who walked like her heels were forged from ice. We were never close — but I showed up for the reading of her will anyway. Caleb was her son, after all.
