My Husband Kept Scheduling Over My Night Classes—Then I Learned Why My Degree Made Him So Uncomfortable

PART 2

I waited until I was parked on campus before I answered.

Because I had class.

Three dots appeared, disappeared, and came back.

Fine.

That single word followed me across the parking lot.

Riverton State’s evening students moved fast. People came in wearing hospital scrubs, warehouse polos, office clothes, steel-toed boots, and the particular expression of adults who had already completed one workday before opening a textbook. I liked that about the place. Nobody seemed interested in pretending education happened outside the rest of life.

Nina Patel had saved me a seat.

“You look like you escaped something,” she whispered.

“Pot roast.”

“Serious.”

Professor Kent started before I could explain.

For the next two hours we argued about a case study involving a neighborhood center that had changed its programming without asking the residents who used it. I spoke twice. The second time Professor Kent pushed back on one of my assumptions, and I changed my answer instead of pretending I had meant something else.

It felt good.

Not triumphant. Just good.

At nine thirty I found Mark in the kitchen loading plates into the dishwasher.

A square of lemon cake sat under plastic wrap beside the coffee maker.

“Did you have to leave like that?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“In the middle of dinner.”

“Dinner had not started.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I went where I said I was going.”

He shut the dishwasher. “You can make up one class.”

“Maybe. That isn’t the point.”

“Then what is?”

“That you knew it mattered before you moved the dinner.”

He leaned against the counter. “I didn’t know it mattered this much.”

I looked at him.

“How much did you think it mattered?”

He did not answer.

The next morning Hannah called while I was labeling irrigation invoices at work.

“Mom, are you actually going back for the degree?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

I stopped writing.

“What does ‘oh’ mean?”

“It means I thought you were just taking a couple classes for fun.”

“Why did you think that?”

A pause.

“Dad told Grandma you’d probably be done after the fall.”