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.

The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. I was aware of all of it because I could no longer trust the face in front of me, so my body started taking inventory of everything else. He was asking for ownership.

Not symbolic ownership. Not emotional ownership. Legal ownership.

“Mark,” I said slowly, “that’s not a small thing.”

“I know.”

“That’s not like adding you to Netflix. That’s my deed.”

“Our deed,” he corrected gently. “No.

Mine. At least right now.”

He gave a little sad smile, like I had missed the point. “Exactly.

Right now. But that should change.”