One day before the wedding, my fiancé laid a neat stack of documents on my kitchen table and said, ‘Add my name to your apartment, or there won’t be a wedding.’ For a second, I thought it had to be some awful, badly timed joke. Then I looked at his face and understood he had not spent the past few months preparing to become my husband. He had been preparing a move. So I let him believe I was willing to listen, smiled just enough to keep him comfortable, and waited for the moment when every plan he had hidden would finally come into the light.

That got my attention. I closed the laptop and turned toward him. “Okay,” I said.

“You sound serious.”

He took both my hands. His face was soft, earnest, almost vulnerable. “Clara, I love you more than anything.

I love the life we’re building. I love this home.”

He looked around the room as he said it, and even then some small protective part of me noticed the wording. This home.

Not our home. Not home. This home.

“I want it to be our home officially,” he said. I smiled because I still didn’t understand. “It is our home.”

“I know emotionally it is.

But legally, it isn’t.”

Something in my stomach tightened. He squeezed my hands a little more firmly. “It’s your apartment.