He continued, his voice growing louder, with a hint of contempt he had never heard before.
"Now what? Who is going to pay the bills? Do you even realize the situation you're putting me and our whole family in? You're useless, Lena. Absolutely useless.
Sitting there in your company, moving papers around, and in the end, you can't even handle it."
I felt a lump in my throat and tears stung in my eyes. But they were not tears of resentment, but rather an epiphany.
It was as if someone had suddenly removed a blindfold from my eyes and I saw the true face of the man I had lived with for so many years. At that moment, I realized that I couldn't tell him the truth. I couldn't admit that it was a test and that I had, in fact, been promoted.
Something inside me was resisting. My intuition whispered to me that it was better to keep quiet and wait to see what would happen. And I heard that whisper.
I just got up and walked out of the room quietly, leaving him screaming into the void. I locked myself in the bathroom and stayed under the hot water for a long time, trying to erase the humiliation and bitterness. How strange, how aloof the man I once considered the closest had become. We didn't speak again that night.
Anton, defiantly, fell asleep on the sofa in the living room, and I was left alone in our room, staring at the ceiling and wondering how it had happened that our seemingly solid marriage had become so fragile.
In the morning, I woke up to the sound of the door. Anton left for work without saying goodbye, without leaving a note, without even waking me up, as he used to do.
I stayed in bed, feeling a strange emptiness inside. The anger, the resentment, the disappointment of yesterday... Everything seemed to evaporate, leaving only a cold clarity of thought.
I needed to go to work. After all, I had a new position, new responsibilities. But something was keeping me at home.
A kind of premonition, intuition, call it what you will. I called my colleague Masha and asked her to cover me, citing health problems. He accepted, although there was a hint of interest in his voice.
⏬ Continued on the next page ⏬
