At two in the morning I went downstairs for water and found Elise sitting beside it, a notebook open in front of her.

“I wrote down the amounts on the paper bands,” she said.

“I haven’t counted them.

I just needed to know this is real.”

“Maybe it isn’t ours.”

“Then we’ll find out properly.”

Elise was the practical one in our marriage.

When I lost my job at the print shop eleven years earlier, she found the forms for temporary coverage before I knew they existed.