The house had once been loud with life — backpacks by the door, laundry in the yard, Joshua singing while the coffee brewed.
Now it felt like a model home: spotless and empty.
Their thirteen-year-old daughter, Maxine, spent more and more nights at friends’ houses.
Nobody asked too many questions.
Children feel the storm coming long before adults will admit it’s begun to rain.
Joshua was a senior financial director at an investment firm in St.
Paul.
Since his last promotion, his suits had gotten more expensive, his trips more frequent, his patience shorter.
When he’d first asked for the divorce, he’d done it with a calm she’d mistaken for maturity.
“We just don’t make each other happy anymore,” he’d said one evening.