Managing on mine.
I stood in the hallway with my coat half on for a moment. Then I put the coat on all the way and went back into the living room and smiled for the rest of the evening.
In the car on the way home I said: “I heard what you told your uncle.”
Daniel said: “I was just simplifying.”
“You said we were managing on your income.”
“That’s basically accurate from their perspective. They don’t get the freelance thing.”
“I made forty-three thousand dollars last year from the consulting work,” I said. “That is not managing on your income.”
He was quiet. Then he said: “I know. I’m sorry. I just — they have a picture of how things work and it’s easier not to fight it.”
“It’s easier not to fight it by telling them I don’t work.”
He did not answer that.
That was six months before the email from Julia.
## The Six Months in Between
I want to be honest about what I did with those six months, because it is not entirely a flattering account.
I did not force the issue. I was irritated — more than irritated, I was genuinely bothered, in a way that sat with me through the new year and into spring — but I did not sit Daniel down and make it a condition. I told him, after the Christmas conversation, that he needed to correct it. He said he would. He did not, as far as I could tell, do anything of the kind.