“You’ve ruined my seventieth birthday,” she said, muffled.

Aunt Beatrice looked down at her sister with an expression of deep and weary sadness.

“No, sister,” she said.

“This was ruined long before today.”

And for the first time in eight years of marriage, I looked at my husband and saw, moving across his face, something I had never once seen there before.

Genuine fear.

It was not fear of losing me.

I want to be precise about that, because I spent a foolish moment mistaking it for something tender.