“Now you’ll never marry my son!” my mother-in-law laughed, setting my wedding dress on fire. I wiped my tears, smiled coldly, and said, “Enjoy destroying that dress, because the wedding was never the real trap.” Her face went completely pale when I made one quick phone call…

a decade in the span of three minutes.

“Mother.” Jason’s voice had lost all its usual warmth, flattened into a dangerous, metallic frequency. “Look me in the eye and tell me I did not just watch you incinerate Valerie’s gown while announcing she was trash.”

Margaret’s expression reassembled into a mask of wounded maternal martyrdom so rapidly I almost continue reading …