Claire set her wine glass down very carefully. She looked straight at my husband.

“That was unnecessary, Daniel,” she said.

“Relax,” Daniel said. He laughed and waved his hand. “It’s a joke. She knows I’m joking.”

“Didn’t sound like one,” I said quietly.

Hic.

I wanted to disappear. I wanted the floor of that steakhouse to open up and swallow me whole, chair and all.

Instead, I did what I’d been doing for eight years.

I folded my napkin. I put it neatly on the table beside my plate. And I smiled.

“Of course, sweetheart,” I said.

Daniel looked satisfied. He handed the waiter his card.

Then he ordered dessert for everyone.

My name is Emma. I’m thirty-six years old.

And for the past eight years, I’ve been a stay-at-home mom to our daughter, Lily, who’s eight, and our son, Noah, who’s five.

But before that, I had a whole different life.

Eight years ago, I could organize a wedding for a hundred guests without breaking a sweat.

I was an event coordinator at a company called Bright Day Events. Weddings, mostly. Some corporate parties. A few bar mitzvahs. Once, a funeral for a very rich man who’d wanted his ashes shot out of a cannon over Lake Michigan. That one was complicated.

I loved my job. I really did. I loved the clipboards and the timelines and the color-coded spreadsheets. I loved standing at the back of a ballroom with a headset on, watching a hundred tiny details come together at exactly the right moment. The lights dimming. The music starting. The doors opening. The bride walking in.

I loved it even when it made me so nervous that I hiccupped through my presentations to clients.

My boss back then was a woman named Rachel Kim. She was tough and funny and wore enormous earrings. She used to tease me about my hiccups in front of the whole office.

“Three hiccups means a difficult client,” Rachel would say. “Five means somebody forgot the wedding cake.”

When Lily was born, Daniel and I sat down at our kitchen table and made a plan.

Daniel was a sales manager at a medical equipment company. He made more money than I did. A lot more. And childcare in our town was so expensive that it would have eaten almost my entire paycheck.

“I’ll earn the money,” Daniel said. “You’ll handle the kids. Deal?”

He held out his hand across the table like we were signing a business contract. He was grinning.

I took his hand.

“Deal,” I said. “But we’re still equal partners, right?”

“Of course!” he said.

He kissed my knuckles.

“Equal partners,” he said. “Always.”

Eight years later, his favorite joke was a little different.

He’d come downstairs in the morning in his suit, straightening his tie. I’d be standing at the counter at six-thirty, packing two lunches, signing a permission slip, looking for Noah’s other shoe, and trying to remember whether it was library day or gym day.

“How’s your permanent vacation going, Emma?” Daniel would say.

He thought it was hilarious. He said it at least twice a week.

“Wonderful,” I’d say. “I’ve already worked three hours, and it’s not even breakfast.”

He’d laugh and pour his coffee.

“Must be nice sleeping in,” he’d say on his way out the door.

I hadn’t slept past six-fifteen in eight years.