Arthur had called demanding to know why the heat was gone.

He thought the crisis was a thermostat.

It wasn’t.

The real thing that had gone cold was a marriage in which one person carried everything while everyone else acted entitled to the warmth.

It took losing that comfort for Arthur to understand what I had been providing.

And it took one accidentally delivered HOA notice for us to uncover what Deborah had been hiding beneath years of criticism, dependency, and control.

As fireworks reflected against the glass, Arthur squeezed