That night, after I tucked Nora into bed, I sat in the living room waiting for Garrett to come home from work. Each tick of the clock seemed to amplify the anxiety gnawing at me. When he finally walked through the door, I struggled to keep my expression neutral.

“Hey, how was your day?” he asked, dropping his briefcase by the door and giving me a kiss on the cheek.

“Fine,” I replied, my voice tight. “We need to talk.”

The change in my tone didn’t go unnoticed. He sat on the couch, a concerned look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves. “I heard Nora talking to her teddy bear today. She mentioned something about a secret you told her to keep from me.”

Garrett’s face went pale, and his eyes widened slightly, a reaction that sent my heart into my throat. “Eveline, it’s not what you think,” he began, but his voice lacked the usual confidence.

“What do you mean, ‘not what I think’? She’s five years old, Garrett. She shouldn’t be burdened with secrets, especially ones that make her scared I’ll leave.”

He ran a hand through his hair, looking away. “It’s just… something personal. I didn’t mean for her to be involved like that.”

“Something personal?” I echoed, my voice rising. “What on earth could be so personal that you’d make our daughter keep it secret from me?”

He sighed, visibly deflating. “It’s some financial stuff, okay? I’ve been working on a side business, but it’s not going well. I didn’t want to worry you.”

A flicker of relief mingled with the betrayal I felt. Financial troubles were something we could deal with together — but the secrecy and involving Nora were hard to forgive. “Garrett, we promised to be partners in everything. You can’t hide things like this from me, and you certainly can’t bring Nora into it.”

He nodded, looking genuinely remorseful. “I know, I know. I just thought I could fix it on my own. I’m sorry, Eveline. I never wanted to put Nora in the middle.”

We talked for hours that night, unraveling the financial mess he had tried to conceal. It would take time to rebuild my trust, but we agreed to face the problem as a team from then on. I hoped that, in time, Garrett would understand that our strength lay in our unity, not in the secrets we kept.