Family dinners at the Millers’ had always been an emotional minefield for me, but that night everything crossed all imaginable boundaries. The moment I sat down, I felt the tension: my husband’s mother-in-law, Helen, watching me with that sour smile, and her sister, Claire, whispering something in her ear while brazenly pointing at me. My husband, Andrew, was serving the soup in silence… too much silence.
When I dropped my napkin on the floor and bent down to pick it up, I heard a mocking comment about “my usual clumsiness.” I decided to ignore it. But just as I stood up, Andrew lifted the tureen and, without warning, poured the boiling contents over my head. The scalding liquid slid down my face, my neck, my shoulders. The pain was immediate, but more than that, what paralyzed me was hearing his mother’s laughter.
