“To your lake house. What else?” My mother-in-law stepped forward, her boots crunching on the porcelain shards.
She hadn’t taken her shoes off, of course, leaving streaks of slush and street grime on my polished hardwood floors.
“Mark and I decided it’s time to get that place in order. Summer is coming. Right now, it’s just a patch of weeds and that drafty old cabin. I found a local contractor. They’ll tear that shack down. We’ll put in a proper deck and a sauna. Mark needs a place to relax; he works like a dog. And you’ve just got a museum of mold up there.”
The cabin had been left to me by my grandfather. It wasn’t a “shack”; it was a sturdy, well-maintained timber home in a quiet lakeside community. I didn’t let anyone up there. I barely let Mark go, because my husband had a unique talent for turning any space into a graveyard of beer cans and charcoal ash.
“No,” I said.
“What do you mean, no?” Eleanor bristled, looming over me. She was a large woman, built like a freight train in a designer scarf.
“I’m not giving you the keys. I’m not tearing down the cabin. And please, take your shoes off or leave. You’re tracking mud across my home.”
“Your home!” she shrieked. “Listen to her! A husband and wife are one. Everything is shared. Mark works his fingers to the bone for this place.”
“Mark pays for the internet and his own lunches,” I countered. I felt a cold, sharp energy rising in my chest. “This condo is mine. I bought it before we met. I paid off the mortgage. I paid for the renovation. Mark is just a resident here.”
This was the forbidden topic. Mark had lied to his mother, telling her he was the one paying the mortgage so he could look like the “provider.” I had stayed silent for the sake of peace.
Eleanor’s face turned a mottled purple.
“You ungrateful girl!” she hissed. “I’ve been nothing but kind to you! I give you advice, I bring you vegetables from my garden, and you—you humiliate my son? You hold a roof over his head like a threat? Well, I’ll show you!”
She lunged forward, trying to either grab my shoulders or shake me. I wasn’t a fighter, but I had good reflexes. I simply stepped to the side. It was instinctive, like avoiding someone on a crowded sidewalk. Eleanor, losing her footing on the shards and the slick floor, stumbled. She clawed at the air, elbowed the mirror, and landed heavily on the upholstered ottoman.
She didn’t fall hard, and she didn’t hit her head—she just plopped her weight onto the soft cushion. But she reacted like she’d been hit by a truck.
“She killed me!” she screamed, loud enough to rattle the windows. “My back! Oh, my back!”
She scrambled off the ottoman with surprising agility for someone “mortally wounded” and bolted out the door, leaving her purse behind. The door slammed. I stood there in the silence.
Below my feet, the blue-and-white porcelain lay in ruins. I didn’t clean it up yet. Instead, I went to the window. We were on the third floor of a solid pre-war building, giving me a clear view of the street. Eleanor was standing by the curb. No sign of a back injury. She was furiously tapping at her phone, then pressed it to her ear. Her gestures were theatrical—clutching her lower back, throwing her head back, pointing up at my window as if she were cursing the very bricks.
I watched the performance and felt the fog lift. The years of “being the bigger person” and making compromises were over. My phone buzzed. A text from Mark: “Mom said you pushed her down the stairs. Get ready, I’m leaving work now. You’re going to regret this.”
