But promises, she was learning, could become cages without ever meaning to. Their home had changed with him. The front steps were gone, replaced by a ramp that creaked on rainy days. The hallway looked wider because half their furniture had been pushed aside to make room for the chair. The living room had rails like a rehab facility.
The spare bedroom was no longer “spare”—it was storage for supplies: disposable gloves, gauze, skin barrier cream, a brace they tried once and then never again. Sometimes Julia stood in the doorway of that room and felt like a visitor in her own house. Marcus’s mood shifted in cycles. Good days when he joked about racing her down the hall in his chair.