Christmastime was approaching in Carrollton, Texas, and Nancy Howard’s husband, Frank, was putting up the Christmas lights.
The two-story brick house was the sort of house Frank and Nancy had dreamed about since the day they were married, twenty-eight years ago now, in Frank’s daddy’s church. The house where their three grown-up children always came back to for the holidays.
Nancy missed Ashley, Jay, and Brianna so much it was like part of her own body had gone missing. But the truth was that she also looked forward to her years as an empty nester. Frank was a hardworking man. At home he’d been a devoted father, with all the time in the world for their kids. Nancy loved and admired those qualities. But Frank’s work, the kids, and all of the hours that Nancy and Frank had spent with their church—that meant less alone time for them. Hard as it was to see her children leave home, Nancy looked for a silver lining and found one: In all of the months and years to come, she’d have more of Frank to herself.
At least, that’s what Nancy had thought.
The Howards had seen each other through some hard times. Ashley, their oldest, had barely survived her first days in the hospital. That had tested Frank and Nancy’s faith. So had Frank’s prostate cancer and Nancy’s fibromyalgia—a chronic condition that disturbed her sleep and her moods and made her muscles ache constantly. But in the end, those trials had only strengthened their bond.
Then, in 2009, Frank’s two-man accounting firm had taken on a new client.
At first, it had seemed like a windfall. The client was a defense contractor named Richard Raley—a man with significant interests in the Middle East. What Raley did specifically was ship ice, military hardware, and other equipment to American troops in Iraq. What he’d engaged Frank to do, after the death of his previous accountant, was to help him manage tens of millions of dollars he’d made in Kuwait.
Officially, Frank was to be paid $10,000 a month to advise Raley’s firm on issues relating to investments and taxes.
Frank had his questions about the operation, and about Richard Raley, but he kept them to himself, and Raley ended up making Frank his chief financial officer.
The job came with significant perks: new office space, the use of Raley’s own private jet. Frank bought himself a Lexus and began flying to the West Coast, Europe, and the Middle East on business. Left behind in Carrollton, Nancy felt lonely and abandoned. But what made it worse was that the Frank who came back from these trips seemed less and less like the man she had married.
Distant. Furtive. Angry.
For two years now, those were the words Nancy had tried to avoid when she thought of her husband.
For two years, those same words kept coming to mind.
Nancy blamed Richard Raley and the long hours that Frank had been putting in, ever since Raley had made him his CFO. Frank himself had told her that the job was wearing him out. But Nancy wondered if there was more to it than that. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. Something that was nagging at Frank and pulling him further and further away from their marriage.
Now she watched from the kitchen as Frank dug around in a big bin of old holiday decorations.
After a minute, he pulled out something that looked a lot like a strongbox.
Furtively, he carried the box out into the yard.
Outside, Frank darted behind a bush and dropped the strongbox into a small hole he’d dug there. In the time that it took Nancy to follow him into the yard, he’d made it back up the ladder.
“Frank? Frank?”
Jesus, Frank thought, what is it now?
“These are all wrong,” Nancy said, pointing at the Christmas lights he’d already strung up. “You’re going to do this side over.”
Looking down from the ladder, Frank smiled. But underneath he was seething. As far as he was concerned, Nancy nagged him and nagged him, always over the smallest details. But the big picture was completely beyond her. She simply couldn’t see how hard Frank had worked for their family. She couldn’t understand the sacrifices he’d made, all his traveling, his long hours. And when he got home, there she was—always nagging and egging him on.
Who cared if the Christmas lights were crooked?
Frank barely swallowed his fury.
“Well, if you say so!” he said as he adjusted the lights.