She worked long hours for a regional logistics firm, often staying late to handle urgent calls from dispatchers and drivers and warehouses across three states.

Desmond, an assistant buyer at a wholesale distributor, made a show of resenting her schedule — but what he actually felt, down where he didn’t look, was jealousy.

She was the one people called when a decision had to be made.

He was the one his supervisors forgot was in the room.

He has thought a great deal, since, about that jealousy, because it was the crack through which everything else got in.

It is an ugly thing to admit that you resented your wife for being good at her life, but that was the truth of him at thirty-two: he had married a capable, warm, hardworking woman, and instead of being lifted by her, he had felt diminished.