“Your mom said you needed to stop being difficult. She said you were hysterical, that you wouldn’t listen, that sometimes consequences are the only thing that works.”
There it was. Clean. Simple. Ugly.
“You talked to her about me?” I asked.
He shrugged slightly.
“She knows how to handle you.”
Handle me.
Behind me, Rachel inhaled sharply. My chest felt hollow, yet my mind had never been clearer. I thought about every moment in the past year I had explained away: Ethan laughing when my mother mocked my career, Ethan telling me I was “too sensitive,” Ethan insisting I should apologize after every family argument just to keep the peace.
I had mistaken his calm for kindness.
It was never kindness.
It was alignment.
I turned to face the guests. Nearly a hundred people sat in white chairs beneath soft lights and floral arches I had spent months choosing. Colleagues from work, cousins from Ohio, neighbors from my childhood street, college friends who had flown in from Seattle and Denver. Some faces showed confusion. Others looked embarrassed.
“My mother hit me last night,” I said.
The room froze.
I touched the bruise beneath my eye.
“And apparently my fiancé thinks that was a useful lesson.”