I noticed the fatigue first.
Not the clean, manageable tiredness that came from long hours and insufficient sleep, but something deeper and more persistent, a heaviness that sat behind my eyes and in the muscles of my shoulders and did not lift the way it should have after a full night of rest. I had been dismissing it for weeks, filing it under the category of things that were inconvenient but explicable. The workload had increased. The pressure of the household had increased. Charles expected more from me than he ever had before, and more from me meant less margin for recovery.
That was the explanation I gave it. I held onto that explanation carefully.
