My MIL hurt my 6-year-old daughter over a dress, and when I stepped in, my SIL spat in my face. My husband nodded, saying, “They’re not wrong.” I didn’t fight. I packed our bags, walked out, and by morning, the legal papers I served them proved that the house they lived in belonged to…

money—old, local money wrapped in new, shiny pretensions. His mother, Beth, was the matriarchal sun around which her sons revolved. She was a woman who weaponized “etiquette” to mask cruelty. His sister, Carol, was her lieutenant—a woman who peaked in high school and had spent the last twenty years trying to recreate that hierarchy in adulthood.

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