Chapter 2
Ellie was two years old and had the kind of face strangers smiled at without meaning to.
Brown curls, wide eyes, pink T-shirt, little bunny slippers she refused to take off even in June.
She was not difficult.
She was curious.
There is a difference, though Linda treated curiosity like a defect.
“She gets into everything,” Linda complained constantly.
Yes, I thought. She’s two.
That week, Linda had started coming over every morning “to help.”
I hadn’t asked for help.
Ben had.
“Mom’s just trying to take pressure off you,” he said.
The pressure, as it turned out, mostly took the form of Linda standing in my kitchen criticizing how I loaded the dishwasher while I packed Ellie’s daycare bag.
Two days before the breakfast incident, I walked in on Linda pulling a coloring book away from Ellie so sharply that my daughter stumbled back onto her diapered bottom.
“She needs to learn not everything belongs to her,” Linda said.
“She’s a toddler,” I answered.
“She’s a spoiled toddler.”
Ben, who had watched the entire thing from his barstool, took a sip of coffee and said, “Mom’s not wrong. You baby her too much.”
I stared at him.
He saw my face and rolled his eyes.
“I’m just saying you react to every little thing like it’s a courtroom.”
That line stayed with me because it was such a strange thing to say.
A courtroom.
At the time I assumed it was one more example of Ben being dramatic.
Later, I realized it wasn’t dramatic at all.
It was revealing.
By then, though, I was still telling myself the same thing I had told myself for months: Ben was stressed, Linda was awful, and if I just kept Ellie safe and made it through this period, things would settle down.
But bad people count on decent women loving the word temporary.
That was my first mistake.
My second mistake was believing Linda’s cruelty was impulsive.
May you like
It wasn’t.
By the end of the weekend, I would understand that better than I wanted to.
