My name is Serena Walsh. I am thirty-two years old, a pediatric nurse who spends her nights soothing fevers and her days raising a spirited eight-year-old girl named Ivy. For a long time, I believed that fairy tales were just stories we told children to help them sleep, not realities for women like me—women with “history,” with “baggage,” with scars.

Then I met Marcus Thompson.

But in that moment, staring out at the sea of guests, the fairy tale felt like it was dissolving into a nightmare. Standing at the DJ booth, commanding the room with the posture of a retired general, was my new mother-in-law, Dolores Thompson.