He Spent Two Years Mocking How Tired I Looked While I Paid Every Bill. He Never Mentioned Whose Name Was on the Mortgage

He didn’t look for another one.

He didn’t send a resume.

He spent his afternoons playing video games on the couch — while I went back to work three weeks after a C-section and pulled eighty-hour weeks to cover this mortgage, our children’s medical bills, and the payments on the luxury car parked in that driveway.

That is why I look tired.

I look tired because I have been carrying four people up a hill for two years, alone, while one of them told me I wasn’t pretty enough while I did it.”

The murmur had become something else now, something that was turning, slowly, against the birthday boy.