“You’re really going to let your wife do this?”
His smile disappeared.
“Mom, don’t start. You know how dramatic you get.”
Those words hurt more than the bowl.
Because I recognized them.
They were the same words David had used when Brooke threw away Arthur’s photographs.
The same words he had used when they moved my clothes out of the master bedroom.
The same words he had used when Brooke told me I could no longer invite friends to the house without permission.
And every time, I had convinced myself that keeping the peace was more important than winning an argument.
I had been wrong.
Brooke tapped the side of the bowl with a spoon.
“Your dinner’s getting cold.”
I slowly placed my napkin on the table.
Then I asked one question.
“Where is Emily?”
Brooke rolled her eyes.
My seventeen-year-old granddaughter had been mysteriously absent when I arrived downstairs for the celebration.
“She didn’t want to come,” Brooke replied.
“That’s not like her.”
“Teenagers have better things to do than listen to old people complain.”
I looked at David.
“Where is my granddaughter?”
He avoided my eyes.
“She’s staying with a friend.”
Something in his voice frightened me.
Emily had never missed my birthday.
Not once.
Even when she was little and had the flu, she made me a card covered in crooked hearts and insisted that her father deliver it.
I reached for my handbag.
Brooke stopped smiling.
