He told me the job loss itself was frightening.
But what terrified him most was that his wife had no idea how their finances worked and no recent work history.
“If something happens to me,” he said, “she has nothing that’s hers.”
That sentence followed me home.
Because Marissa had once had something that was hers.
Design.
She had been halfway through a professional interior planning program when we got married.
She was talented.
Not in the decorative-TV-show sense.
Technical.
She could walk into a room and immediately see scale, circulation, light, load, function.
She used CAD software before I knew what CAD meant.
Then I was promoted.
We moved to Ridgehaven.
Her program did not transfer smoothly.
She took a break.
I told her:
“We don’t need the money.”
That sentence sounded generous.
Maybe it was.
Then came another promotion.
A bigger house.
Travel.
Better restaurants.
