My Husband Divorced Me At 78, Taking Our $4.5 Million House: “You’ll Never See The Grandkids Again.” He Laughed, I Left. A Month Later, An Unknown Number Called Me: “Ma’am, There’s Been An Urgent Situation Involving Your Husband…”

But then I noticed he had started closing his laptop when I entered the room. Harold, who had spent 30 years as a civil engineer and claimed he would never understand computers, was suddenly protective of a screen. He took phone calls in the garage. He began driving to the hardware store on Saturday mornings and returning two hours later without a single bag. Once, I smelled perfume on his jacket collar, something young and synthetic, nothing I recognized.

I did not confront him immediately. I am not by nature a dramatic woman. I watched. I listened. I told myself there were explanations. We had been through difficult seasons before. The year Douglas nearly lost his business. The year I had a cancer scare that turned out to be nothing. We had always come through.

But one evening in December, I found a card in his coat pocket while I was taking it to the dry cleaner. It was a Christmas card, unsigned, but the handwriting was feminine and careful. It said, “Every day with you is a gift.”

K.