“You can wait by the coat check,” he had instructed when we arrived, not bothering to turn his head. With Kenneth, there were never suggestions, only directives delivered with the certainty of a man who had never been meaningfully challenged. “I need to make connections tonight. Important people will be here. The kind of people who can save what I’ve built. You understand?”

I understood. I always understood. Understanding had become my primary function somewhere around year seven, the year I stopped trying to stand beside him and started accepting my assigned positions in the margins, the corners, and the shadowed alcoves.

I was the invisible wife. The woman who existed in tax documents and on impeccably staged holiday cards, but rarely in the moments that actually mattered. The woman whose intelligence was only acknowledged when Kenneth could strip-mine it for insights to present as his own.