a difficult quarter, she privately suggested that I had become a distraction.
“Men need peace at home,” she told me once. “They cannot be expected to build empires while their wives constantly demand attention.”
I wasn’t demanding attention.
I was asking my husband to spend an evening with me without checking his phone every three minutes.
But Margaret had a gift for making ordinary requests sound like unreasonable demands.
Ethan gradually adopted her language.
If I questioned a decision, I was difficult.
If I asked for transparency, I was suspicious.
