The glossy cruise brochure on our laminate kitchen table had a smear of yellow mustard across the picture of the private balcony. Daniel was already talking about the thread-count of the sheets on the Queen Victoria before I finished rinsing our lunch plates. He held the booklet open with both hands, his thumb resting near a photo of a couple drinking champagne under a painted Mediterranean sky.
“They only gave out three of these packages in the entire midwest region,” he said, tapping the glossy paper with his finger. “Top sales representative gets the presidential suite, all expenses paid. The company is even covering the port taxes.”
I turned off the tap and dried my hands on the dish towel, keeping my thumb over my plain gold wedding band to stop it from sliding. My fingers had started swelling in the late summer heat, but today they felt cold. I looked at the envelope from the bank sitting near the breadbox, its window showing our names.
“Our joint savings account has four hundred and twelve dollars in it, Daniel,” I said, my voice soft. “We have the monthly mortgage payment of one thousand two hundred dollars due on the first, and the utility bills are already rising.”
He leaned back in his chair, his smooth, defensive smile remaining perfectly in place. He was thirty-four, and when he wore his light blue sales shirts, he looked like a man who had never spent a single night lying awake over a spreadsheet.
“The trip is completely covered, Helen,” he said. “The cabins, the dinners, the shore excursions. We actually got lucky for once, Helen. You do not need to stress about every single four dollar bottle of baby formula.”
“We still have to pay for the house while you are gone,” I said, pointing toward the bank statement. “And I am twenty-four weeks along. What if the babies decide to come before you get back?”
“They are not due for months,” he said, sliding the brochure into his leather briefcase. “The doctor said everything was fine at the last checkup. Besides, this regional director promotion is mine if I show them I can handle the networking on this trip.”
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