STORY: He Still Made Me Eggs

They had been married for 24 years, raised two kids and worked through three dogs, two houses and four careers cummulatively. His fury had been growing to this moment for about 14 of those years.

“Do you want to talk about what’s wrong?” Marjorie asked her husband cautiously in the kitchen.

He held a half-cracked egg over a pan as he turned to her. In a low, flat tone he said, “I’m just pretty furious.”

“Okay,” she said, with a tremor in her voice. “Do you wanna tell me why?”

He said flatly, as he made eye contact with her for the first time in 12 hours, “You know I’m always telling you we have to be saving money for that plot of land we want to retire on.” He continued in a smoldering mono tone as if he had rehearsed it a dozen times. “I just found out yesterday the reason it felt like it was always pouring out somewhere and never accumulating.”

“Oh, dear.” She said. “Did we get hacked or something?” She looked at him sideways because it felt like his anger was aimed at her.

“I finally added up those recurring withdrawals each month that we couldn’t figure out where they were going. Those ones that were named different letters and such. It has added up to 24,000 over the past couple decades. If we had invested that we would have enough for the land right now. We could have been retired and already had the goats and chickens, the picket fence and everything.”

“Where was it going?” She brought her trembling fingers to her lips. She tried to remember if she had forgotten to stop a subscription.

“I’ve asked you at least a dozen times to go back and cancel those trials you sign up for.”

Now she was silent. “Which one was it?”

“A FEW different ones.” His eyes laid heavily on her.

Her mouth opened but was speechless as she looked down. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

They both knew those types of things were nearly impossible for her to stay on top of with her style of ADHD.

After he turned back around and finished cracking four eggs into the pan, he crossed his arms and looked at her. He said flatly, “Do you want salsa today?”

She looked up, a bit surprised. Then she looked at the eggs wide-eyed and swallowed. She nodded and whispered, “Yes please.” Then she bit down on both of her lips and held her hand up to her face. She stumbled over to, and leaned against the plush chair in the living room.

He walked over to her a few minutes later. “Your eggs.” He set a bowl of eggs drizzled in salsa on the ottoman in front of her. “Is it time to do our worship song?” His voice still holding back anger. They tried to do one together every morning. She looked up at him. His face was still like steel.

“Sure,” the noise barely came out of her. He pressed play on the CD player on the mantle and sat down in the plush chair. His arm reached to motion her to sit on his lap like they had done most days for the last 5 years. She slowly repositioned herself onto his leg and his arms went around her like they had so many millions of times.

And they sang together to the song, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

His throat clenched up several times while trying to sing, exhausted from the weight of his anger. He leaned his head into her and she immediately embraced it. She hesitated to do anything else for him, lest it be something he didn’t invite. He was avoiding her eyes again.

By the time the song ended she was covering her face. And a messy sniff leaked out. He didn’t move. She slowly leaned away and got up, a hand lingering on him for a moment to show him it wasn’t her rejecting him.

She tip-toed around him the rest of the day. Not meeting his eyes, but folding his clothes better than she ever had before. And making him a smoothie out of the blue, but just the way she knew he liked it. And even sitting at the computer to catch up on bills, even though she was notoriously bad at doing it.

And as they got into bed that night, both of them still not able to look at the other, he said quietly, “Thank you for being so kind to me today. And I know it is very hard for you to keep track of all those random STWX or whatever confusing letters they use to make it hard to find them and unsubscribe.”

She whispered, “You’re welcome.” And after a moment she added, “Thanks.” Then after a few more minutes while still neither of their breath had begun to sound like that of sleep, she said, “I just can’t get over how furious you are at me…” and she was quiet so long that he started to speak with a newly steeled reply.

But she finished swallowing the knot in her throat and finished, “—and you still made me eggs.”

He calmed over the next minute and then reached for her hand under the covers. She quickly gripped it right back, pulled it to her mouth, and kissed it.

A few moments later, after their heart rates had settled, she asked, “Wait, did you say. . . STWX?”

“Something like that. But there were several that look like that with random letters. You know, probably picked so we aren’t able to Google the companies?”

“That sounds so familiar.” She spent a moment thinking, “Remember that class I took a long time ago to try and understand finances better? I think the teachers helped me set up recurring withdrawals to the stock market. I think maybe the names of some of the mutual funds sound something like that. And you know me, I almost entirely forgot about it.”

“Really? Well what about the ‘betterBox’ withdrawals. I did recognize that one.”

“Okay, so that one really is that one I should have tried to un-subscribe.”

“Okay.” He breathed in deeply. “It was only $15/month anyways.”

“Still, they’re crooks.”

A chuckle puffed out of him. After another moment he said, “Do you know how to look to see if the other stuff is mutual funds?”

“I have no idea.” She said.

He got out of bed, and went to the study. He turned on the computer as she followed him in her bathrobe. He drew back the chair so she could sit on his lap. He searched the top two or three financial investing sites and tried to login using her same password she had used for everything for 20 years. Eventually it worked on Schwab.com. He clicked through until an account balance looked back at them on the screen.

She bit her lips again. His hands wrapped around her like they had done a million million times. He said, “I won’t be too mad if we never figure out what betterBox is.”

“Thanks.” And she added with an even tone, “And once we get our chickens I’ll make you eggs whenever I’m mad at you.”

Raw Spoon

January 11, 2026