Here is what four years in that apartment actually looked like.

I paid the mortgage — half of it formally, and by 2023 all of it in practice, because Mitchell’s contribution had become erratic and I had stopped asking why.

I paid daycare.

I paid the utilities, the groceries, the insurance, Daisy’s clothes, and eventually, without anybody discussing it, Beatrice’s prescriptions.

My salary went into a joint account.

Everything came out of that account.