For years she had believed that being a good wife meant preserving harmony in her household at all costs.

She had never once considered the possibility that any harmony requiring one person to surrender their comfort, their privacy, their financial security, their family memories, and their authority over their own home was not harmony at all.

It was quiet resentment, hidden behind beautiful furniture.

That was the sentence that stayed with her, sitting in the dusk.

Her house had always looked harmonious.

Guests had admired it — the restored floors, the arranged photographs, the calm.