Every cubic inch of air went out of Tom’s lungs in a violent rush. His feet left the floorboards. He slammed into the oak television console with a bone-rattling thud.

Our framed wedding portrait wobbled on the edge and plummeted face-down, glass shattering. Tom slid down the cabinet doors and collapsed into a heap, clutching his chest, his mouth opening and closing on a vacuum, eyes bulging like he’d seen an apparition.

“You… you…” he wheezed.

I stepped over the gravy, picked up the fallen photo, and brushed the pulverized glass off my smiling, white-gowned image. I set it back on the console, crouched beside my gasping husband, and patted his sweat-drenched cheek.

“You were entirely correct, Tommy,” I whispered. “You do have to hit until they learn. But you made one catastrophic miscalculation.”

I gripped his jaw, fingers digging into the soft flesh of his cheeks, forcing his teary eyes to meet my dead ones.