The first time I met my mother-in-law Patricia, she looked at me the way someone would examine something they're not sure they want in their house.
Not with curiosity. Not with warmth.
With suspicion.
At our wedding reception, she hugged Dave briefly, before turning to study me from head to toe and commenting on the color of my dress.
It was white.
Obviously she had wanted to be the only woman wearing it that day.
In that one moment, I understood exactly what the years to come would look like.
The woman who ruled everything like an inspection
Patricia was not the kind of mother-in-law who made things difficult with grand gestures or dramatic confrontations.
She was much more precise than that.
When she visited our home, she would walk through the rooms and run her finger along the bookshelves and door frames to check for dust.
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If she found someone, she never said it directly.
She just wanted to smile.
That smile was somehow worse than any complaint could have been.
But her true hobby, the one she returned to again and again at every family gathering, every holiday dinner, every birthday celebration, sowed doubts about my son.
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Sam was five years old. Smart and curious and full of questions about everything.
He had my dark curls, my olive skin tone, and my big brown eyes.
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