That was my mistake.
Part Two: The Shelf That Moved Twice
It took Vanessa about three weeks to develop what I can only describe as a strange dependence on Irvin.
Whenever something needed doing at her house, she called him.
Not a plumber. Not a handyman. Not her brother, or her friends, or the hardware store two miles away that had a whole aisle of people paid to answer questions.
My husband.
The requests started small, almost sweet.
A jar of pickles she couldn’t open. A smoke detector chirping at midnight with a battery she couldn’t reach. A cabinet handle that had come loose. A lightbulb in the hallway that was “just too high.”
Then they started to get creative.
One evening she asked Irvin to come over and move a bookshelf eight inches to the left because it “threw off the whole room.” He went, moved it, and came back twenty minutes later.
