The morning started like any other morning in the Richardson household. I woke up at six-thirty, made coffee, and began preparing breakfast while my six-year-old son Ethan sat at the kitchen table swinging his legs and humming some cartoon theme song I’d heard a thousand times but could never quite place. “Big day today, buddy,” I said, setting a plate of scrambled eggs in front of him.
“Dr. Morrison is going to check out that arm.”
Two weeks earlier, Ethan had taken a spill off his bike. The X-rays showed no fracture, but our pediatrician wanted a specialist to follow up just to be safe.
I’d rearranged my schedule at the documentary production company twice to make sure I could take him. Then my wife walked into the kitchen. “Actually, Mom’s going to take him,” Candace said, not looking at me as she poured herself coffee.
She was already dressed in her yoga clothes, hair pulled back, moving with the brisk efficiency of someone who’d already made all the decisions and wasn’t interested in debate. I felt my jaw tighten. “I cleared my afternoon for this.”
“You have that investor meeting,” she said.
“The one you’ve already postponed twice. Mom offered, and you know how she gets when we refuse her help.”
That was true. Gertrude Sims, my mother-in-law, had a particular talent for making her displeasure known.
Since her husband died five years ago, she’d become increasingly involved in our lives—to the point where I sometimes felt like I was married to both of them. “I don’t feel comfortable with this,” I said quietly. Candace’s expression hardened.
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