The morning started like any other morning in the Richardson household. I woke up at six-thirty, made coffee, and began preparing breakfast while my six-year-old son Ethan sat at the kitchen table swinging his legs and humming some cartoon theme song I\u2019d heard a thousand times but could never quite place.\u201cBig day today, buddy,\u201d I said, setting a plate of scrambled eggs in front of him. \u201cDr. Morrison is going to check out that arm.\u201dTwo weeks earlier, Ethan had taken a spill off his bike. The X-rays showed no fracture, but our pediatrician wanted a specialist to follow up just to be safe. I\u2019d rearranged my schedule at the documentary production company twice to make sure I could take him.Then my wife walked into the kitchen.\u201cActually, Mom\u2019s going to take him,\u201d Candace said, not looking at me as she poured herself coffee. She was already dressed in her yoga clothes, hair pulled back, moving with the brisk efficiency of someone who\u2019d already made all the decisions and wasn\u2019t interested in debate.I felt my jaw tighten. \u201cI cleared my afternoon for this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou have that investor meeting,\u201d she said. \u201cThe one you\u2019ve already postponed twice. Mom offered, and you know how she gets when we refuse her help.\u201dThat was true. Gertrude Sims, my mother-in-law, had a particular talent for making her displeasure known. Since her husband died five years ago, she\u2019d become increasingly involved in our lives\u2014to the point where I sometimes felt like I was married to both of them.\u201cI don\u2019t feel comfortable with this,\u201d I said quietly.Candace\u2019s expression hardened. \u201cYou don\u2019t feel comfortable with anything involving my mother. It\u2019s one appointment, Henry. Let it go.\u201dI\u2019d learned over the past year that our marriage ran smoother when I picked my battles carefully. Money had been tight since my investigative documentary on pharmaceutical corruption had cost me several major contracts. Candace had been spending more time at her mother\u2019s estate in the suburbs, and the distance between us\u2014both literal and emotional\u2014had been growing.So I let it go.Gertrude arrived at ten o\u2019clock sharp, her silver Mercedes gliding into our driveway with practiced precision. She was a tall woman in her late sixties, always impeccably dressed, always wearing the same heavy perfume that made me think of funeral homes and old money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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