“You let me sit there choosing paint colors and arguing about curtains while you were afraid we couldn’t pay the mortgage.”

“I was ashamed.”

“You made me a stranger in my own marriage because you were ashamed,” she said.

Her voice was low, and that somehow made it harder to hear.

Lucas tried to explain the moment in the delivery room, how the possibility of extra medical costs became a wall in his mind.

He admitted he had read alarming information online and convinced himself their daughter would suffer, their finances would collapse, and Hannah would despise him when she learned he’d lost his job.

He spoke as though naming each fear might make the choices that followed understandable.