His face tightened.
“I thought you’d changed your mind.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
He couldn’t answer.
Then he noticed the note about the cake surprise.
He frowned.
“What is this?”
I watched him.
“Apparently your wife arranged a surprise involving me and asked the photographer to capture it.”
He stared.
“She told me she had a funny idea for the cake cutting.”
My chest tightened.
“What did she say?”
“That she wanted a playful moment with the family.”
“Did she tell you what she intended?”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“Then why did you laugh?”
His expression crumpled slightly.
“Because everyone was watching. I didn’t know how to react.”
I stared at my forty-three-year-old son.
For years, I’d believed he was a man who understood responsibility.
He ran a successful contracting business.
Managed employees.
Negotiated difficult projects.
Yet when his wife humiliated his mother, he’d apparently been too frightened of making a scene to say she was wrong.
I looked down at my ruined dress.
“Michael, I have spent my entire life trying to make things easier for you.”
He sat opposite me.
“I know.”
