He pursued me with the same quiet determination he goes about getting whatever he has decided he wants. He isn’t forceful or flamboyant or overtly persuasive. But he’s patient and secure in his own offerings. It’s a long game, Krissy, he often says, and I think he means everything: life, and love, and his career. He seems to have been able to settle into our marriage without growing restless after a few years, and has always made a point out of idolizing me. This is something I have struggled with at times, because by repeatedly claiming that I am ‘perfect’, and ‘the ideal woman’, and ‘ridiculously clever’, he is actually subtly stating his expectations of me. I know he doesn’t do it consciously but we have had many talks over the years about how I feel that those kinds of definitions feel like attempts at control. And yet I am lucky, because I have never had to doubt my husband’s love or devotion. He has never given me any reason to grow suspicious of his actions or motives. But what if I haven’t been looking in the right places? What if he has grown bored and unfulfilled in our marriage and started chasing the next thing, as is his tendency otherwise in life?

*

I swallow hard several times, trying to dislodge the raw hoarseness at the back of my throat. I watch Eirik unhook the window clasps carefully, running his palm against the blueish, densely packed snow outside. One window thankfully opens inwards, and I assume this must be intentional in the event of getting snowed in. Eirik begins to dig, using a metal mixing bowl from the kitchen, emptying the snow into the kitchen sink as he goes along. It is slow and painstaking work. He shrugs his jacket off, having grown hot from the physical effort of the digging and when I complain that I’m getting colder, he comes over and puts it on me, gently slipping my arms into the armholes as if he were dressing a child.