I closed my eyes. “Did you hear yourself that day? Did you actually hear what you were saying?”
Silence.
Then, small and defensive again, “You always make me feel stupid.”
There it was. Not accountability. Injury rerouted.
“Claire,” I said, “this is not about intelligence. This is about character.”
She inhaled sharply like I’d slapped her, which perhaps, emotionally, I had. “You think I don’t love them?”
“I think you let your husband look at our parents’ peace and see cash flow.”
“You have no idea what it’s like being married to someone under that much pressure.”
“No,” I said. “I have a very clear idea what it’s like watching someone excuse the inexcusable because they’re afraid to lose the marriage.”
She hung up on me.
My mother cried when I told her I was done taking the calls for now. My father sat at the kitchen table staring at the ocean and said, very quietly, “She married a man who talks like every room is already his.”
That was one of the few times he came close to naming Daniel accurately.
Over the next week the truth widened.