Bad days when he stared at the TV without seeing it, jaw tight, hands gripping the armrests so hard the tendons stood out. He didn’t yell often. He didn’t have to. Silence could be louder than shouting when it filled a room you once shared with laughter.
Julia learned to read the micro-signs: the way his shoulders lifted when he was bracing for pain, the slight flinch when she touched his calves, the barely-there exhale when he thought she wasn’t listening. She became fluent in the language of someone else’s body. But what no one warned her about was the language of her own resentment.