The dining room looked like a sterile, aggressively staged photograph torn from a catalog for people who possessed wealth but entirely lacked warmth. Heavy, polished silver caught and fractured the amber light bleeding from the hearth. Tall, immaculate crystal wine glasses stood like crystal soldiers, completely untouched. At the absolute head of the long mahogany table sat my husband. Aaron looked infuriatingly relaxed, projecting the aura of a minor king in his impeccably tailored navy blazer. He was swirling a glass of Pinot Noir, smiling a brilliant, practiced smile as he listened to his junior partner, Paul, drone on about a corporate litigation case that meant less than nothing to me.
Aaron looked successful. He looked utterly satisfied with the kingdom he had built. He looked absolutely nothing like the tender, earnest man who had held my face three years ago and promised, with unshed tears in his eyes, that I would never again have to prove my worth to anyone.
He didn’t even bother to lift his chin when I placed the heavy, cut-glass bowl of relish beside his plate.
Judith leaned forward, her eyes narrowing as she subjected the turkey to a forensic examination. She let out a loud, theatrical sigh that ruffled the candle flames. “You rushed the process,” she declared, spearing a slice of the breast meat with her heavy silver fork and holding it up to the light as if inspecting it for poison. “I explicitly told you to baste it every twenty minutes. This dried-out catastrophe is precisely what happens when you refuse to follow simple instructions.”
“I followed your instructions to the letter, Judith,” I replied, my voice thinning out, stretched tight across the drum of my exhaustion. “Every twenty minutes. I set a timer.”
“Well, then your execution was flawed,” she waved her hand dismissively, not bothering to look at my face. “Fetch the pan gravy. Perhaps drowning it can salvage this embarrassment.”
