My mother was crying openly now.
“I was afraid,” she said. “I had watched your father work himself sick. I had watched him lose the house. I couldn’t bear the thought of you going through the same thing.”
I remembered the wedding reception.
The candles.
The white tablecloths.
The guests who had turned toward my mother when she stood to make her toast.
“To the happy couple,” she’d said with a smile. “I give it a year. Ethan, honey, she’s too good for you.”
People had laughed nervously.
Ethan had raised his glass.
“Thank you, Linda. I’ll remember that.”
I’d cried in the bathroom for twenty minutes afterward.
When Ethan found me, he kissed my forehead and told me not to let my mother ruin our wedding.
Now I understood what I’d never understood then.
He had already been humiliated by her in private.
The toast wasn’t an isolated insult.
