She hosted Thanksgiving dinners where she cooked for three days while Catherine criticized her seasoning. She hosted Christmas mornings where Steven arrived late and left early, barely looking at her. She kept their childhood rooms preserved like shrines, beds made, trophies dusted, as if their absence might be temporary if she just maintained the illusion long enough.
She bit her tongue through countless remarks about her “lack of education” and her “small-town manners.”
She learned quickly that the stepchildren enjoyed reminding her she was once “just the secretary.”
And Richard—Richard was kind in his way.
He never hit her. Never screamed. Never publicly humiliated her.
He provided.
He bought her appropriate dresses for charity events. He complimented her when she looked “polished.” He occasionally touched her cheek with the back of his hand when she served him coffee.
But there was always distance, like a room in his mind she wasn’t allowed to enter.
He traveled often for work, sometimes weeks at a time. He maintained a home office that was strictly off-limits.
“I need one space that’s just mine,” he’d told her early in their marriage. “Surely you understand.”
Peggy had understood because she wanted to.
He also kept separate bank accounts Peggy never saw statements for. When she asked once, nervous but curious, Richard patted her hand like she was a child.
“Don’t worry your pretty head about money, darling,” he’d said with a smile. “That’s my job. Your job is to make this house a home. And you do it perfectly.”
Peggy had flushed with pride and pushed her concerns away.
That was her pattern: accept what she was given and call it love.
Even when Richard began taking weekend trips alone—once a month, sometimes more—claiming he needed to decompress at a property inherited from a relative, Peggy never questioned it.
She packed his bag. She kissed him goodbye. She trusted him.
Trust was the foundation she’d built her adult life on.
She would learn later it was a foundation of sand.
Richard died on a Tuesday morning in March, three months shy of his eighty-fifth birthday.
Peggy found him at seven a.m., coffee cup in hand. Forty years of ritual. She brought coffee to his bedside every morning at the same time. It was how she marked her place in the marriage—useful, consistent, needed.
She walked into the bedroom and paused.