Dinner at my mother’s house should have felt normal, but nothing about it was.
Not the way her dining room gleamed—too bright, too polished—like a museum instead of a home. Definitely not the way Annemarie was already halfway through her first glass of wine, tapping her acrylic nails against the crystal stem like she couldn’t wait to start a fight.
Adrian sat beside me, his hand resting lightly on my thigh under the table. His touch grounded me, warm and steady, even though everything else around us felt cold and tense.
Mother smiled at us in that way she does—the kind of smile that isn’t really a smile at all—and said, “So, the two of you are what, reconciled now?”
I swallowed and nodded once. “Yes. We’re working through things.”
Adrian’s fingers tightened on my thigh just a little,
