“Liz is fifteen, not five. In three years she’s an adult. She could be married already in some places. You can’t keep treating her like a little girl and ignore everything she needs to learn.”
And I understood, right there, how all Jenna’s little comments fit together.
“She could be married already in some places.”
Those comments about whether boys would like Liz hadn’t been slips. They were a scorecard.
Jenna had been measuring my daughter against some picture in her own head, and measuring was the right word for it.
“None of that gives you permission to humiliate her,” I said. “Pack what you need and use the room.”
Jenna looked at me like I was a stranger.
“This is my home too,” Jenna said. “You’re going to throw me out over one argument with a teenager?”
“None of that gives you permission to humiliate her,”
“It wasn’t one argument.”
She stared at me, then changed tactics.
“Do you understand what you’re doing here? You’re teaching Liz that she runs this marriage. Every time I set a rule she doesn’t like, she’ll know you’ll take her side. A fifteen-year-old can’t have veto power over her father’s wife.”
For a few seconds, it landed.
