Then, one week later, I boarded a bus to leave town, and the man I had mourned sat down beside me like a ghost and whispered, “Don’t scream. You need to know the whole truth.”
Karl and I had been together for four years before we got married. I thought I knew him better than anyone. I knew how he took his coffee, how he slept curled toward the window, how he hummed when he was nervous, and how he tapped his thumb against his thigh whenever he was thinking too hard.
But there was one part of his life he always kept locked away.
His family.
Every time I asked about them, he shut the conversation down.
“They’re complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
He would give this short, humorless laugh and say, “Rich people complicated.”
