I kept an emergency credit card there — a high-limit card I almost never used, held in reserve for a true crisis, the kind of quiet financial fire extinguisher that an accountant keeps and hopes never to touch.

It was gone.

I stood in the dark, looking at the empty corner of the drawer where it should have been, and I did not wake him, and I did not confront him.

I understood something, all at once and completely, the way you understand a number that has finally reconciled.

This was not a husband who wanted a vacation.

This was a man methodically preparing to spend my money — money he had decided, somewhere along the way, that he was entitled to, that being married to me made his, that my nightstand and my accounts and my labor were all resources of the household he presided over.