I had spent our whole marriage rewarding Derek lavishly for the bare minimum and paying for his family besides, and I was not going to begin my new life by throwing a parade because my husband had, at last, declined to help his father rob me.

So I said, simply, thank you, Derek, and I meant it, and I let it be the beginning of something rather than the resolution of everything, because one no to his father was a true and real and hard thing, and it was also one no, and a marriage is not repaired in a single sentence any more than it is broken in one.

Chapter 19 — The Counselor on Tuesday

Then Derek said the thing that told me he understood the size of it, which was that he had called a marriage counselor the day before, and booked us a session for Tuesday night.