I’m Elena, 35, married to Nick, 36. We live outside Asheville. He’s a systems engineer, I write from home, and his mother Laura is… a capital-letters Personality. The kind of woman who corrects you if you forget the hyphen in “Garrison-Peters.”
For her sixty-third, she “invited” us to dinner by informing Nick we’d be supplying food and drinks because “the birthday girl shouldn’t lift a finger.” She also requested a custom lemon-lavender cake from a boutique bakery. We showed up with that, three casseroles, a cooler, and a joint gift—an on-sale 55″ Samsung from us, Nick’s sister Dani, and her fiancé, Marcus.
Laura opened the door, glanced at the cake, then eyed the TV box. “Oh. I thought you were getting me the 110-inch. I guess this’ll do.”
I pasted on a smile. Nick squeezed my back: Just breathe.
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