“Mr.

Sterling,” I said again, evenly.

For seven years, every disappointment in our marriage had followed one unvarying script.

Julian would come home late, or break a promise, or forget the thing that mattered, and I would confront him, and he would tell me, patiently, that I was being emotional, oversensitive, dramatic — and by the following evening I would be in the kitchen making his favorite dinner, aching to restore the peace, having somehow become the one apologizing.

That was the machine our marriage ran on, and I had fed it faithfully for seven years.

This time, I stepped off it.