Then he said the sentence that made my pulse spike.
“Tanaka doesn’t speak much English,” David said. “I’ll do most of the talking in Japanese. You’ll probably be bored, but just smile through it.”
I forced my voice steady. “You speak Japanese?”
David puffed up, pleased with himself. “Picked it up working with our Tokyo office. I’m basically fluent. That’s why they’re considering me for VP. Not many guys here can negotiate in Japanese.”
He didn’t ask if I understood. It didn’t occur to him.
In his mind, I was the accessory-wife—there for appearances. The role didn’t include language skills.
After he left the kitchen, I stood there holding a knife over chopped carrots, my mind vibrating. He was going to have an entire conversation in Japanese in front of me, believing I was deaf to it.
Part of me felt guilty. Listening without revealing myself felt like spying. But a larger part of me—the part that had learned to shrink in silence—recognized the truth:
This wasn’t spying. This was finally seeing behind the curtain.
That week moved like syrup. I refreshed business vocabulary, practiced polite forms, listened to formal interviews, rewound anything I didn’t catch. I told myself maybe it would be harmless—just talk about markets and projections.
