The Day He Stopped Saving Her

He spent his first life on his wife. What he earned went to her and to her family, and the betrayal that killed him was hers. He comes back to a point before all of that. Her family still leans on its position the way it did before, and he stays off to one side and lets it happen. What they do catches up with them as a compensation claim big enough to take everything they have, and they come to him for help. He turns them down. His wife takes the refusal for a performance. In her reading he is still the man who could never say no to her and is holding out to be asked properly, so she waits for him to come round. The claim against her family is still outstanding.