Chapter 1 - THE PINK SOCK
Nina walked into the Whitmores’ dining room barefoot, holding one pink sock in her fist.
“Mom?”
I looked up from the sideboard.
Her face had gone small in that way children’s faces do when they’re trying not to cry in front of people they don’t trust.
“My clothes are gone.”
Nobody at the table looked confused.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Sylvia, my mother-in-law, lifted her wineglass. Charles kept cutting his roast chicken. My sister-in-law, Monique, stared at her plate.
Only Vivian looked pleased.
I crossed the room and crouched in front of my eight-year-old daughter.
“What clothes?”
“My yellow dress. The flower sweater. My jeans with the patches.” Nina swallowed. “Everything I picked when we packed.”
We had been staying at Charles and Sylvia’s house in Indian Hill, outside Cincinnati, for nine days while a plumbing leak was repaired at our townhouse.
Sylvia sighed.
“Elena, please don’t turn this into something dramatic.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did you do?”
“I cleaned out things she’d outgrown.”
“They fit.”
“They looked cheap.”
Charles chuckled without looking up.
“The yellow dress definitely did.”
Nina’s grip tightened around the sock.
Then Vivian, ten years old and already fluent in the language she heard from adults, swung one glitter-covered shoe beneath her chair.
“Trash suits her anyway.”
Nina looked around the table.
She waited.
No adult corrected Vivian.
Not Sylvia.
Not Charles.
Not Monique.
I stood.
For a second, I wanted to throw Sylvia’s crystal serving bowl through the window.
Instead, I took Nina’s hand.
“Get your backpack.”
Sylvia rolled her eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake.”
I turned toward her.
“Where are the clothes?”
“The donation pickup came this afternoon.”
Nina made a tiny sound beside me.
I felt something inside myself become very quiet.
Charles finally looked up.
“You can buy replacements.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“It’s clothes, Elena.”
“No. It’s my daughter learning that everyone sitting at this table watched you humiliate her.”
Monique whispered, “Elena—”
I looked at her.
She stopped.
My phone buzzed in my handbag.
A message from my husband, Andrew.
Please don’t make a scene. I’ll replace everything when I get home.
I read it twice.
Andrew was supposed to be at the Whitmore Millwork plant twenty minutes away.
Nobody had called him.
I looked at Sylvia.
“When did you tell Andrew?”
Her expression changed.
Not much.
Just enough.
“I didn’t.”
I picked up my handbag.
May you like
That meant Andrew had known before Nina walked into the dining room.
And suddenly the clothes were no longer the only thing I needed explained.
