Each time, Dylan found something fascinating in the middle distance.
By the third evening, I stopped waiting for him to defend me.
That hurt worse than anything Diane said.
I rocked my son on the porch while the ocean turned gold, and I made myself a quiet promise.
“I’m done shrinking,” I whispered to my son. “Watch your mama grow a spine.”
He grabbed my nose and grinned, which I chose to interpret as full support.
“I’m done shrinking,”
The strangest part was how calm I felt.
For weeks I’d been fighting the mirror, hating the softness of my own reflection.
But Diane had accidentally shown me something.
A woman who mocked others that viciously wasn’t strong.
She was terrified.
She wasn’t guarding elegance.
She was guarding her hold on the little kingdom where everyone laughed on command.
She was terrified.
That night, she cornered me by the sink while I washed bottles.
“You seem tense,” she observed sweetly. “You’ve barely eaten today.”
“I’ve never felt better, Diane,” I said, and I meant it.
Something flickered across her face.
She didn’t like an answer she couldn’t wound.
“We’ll see how you feel in that swimsuit tomorrow,” she said, and swept out.
“You seem tense,”
I thought about how she’d measured herself against me every single day.
And I understood, with a strange, peaceful clarity, what her next move would be.
Because people who covet what they mock will eventually reach for it.
They can’t help themselves.
So I would simply stop protecting a woman who had spent four days trying to break me.
I would let her make her own choices, and I would let those choices arrive.
People who covet what they mock will eventually reach for it.
I climbed into bed that night lighter than I had felt in months.
I finally sensed that the real reckoning was coming, and it wasn’t going to be mine.
***
The fourth afternoon started quietly, which should have been my first warning.
I’d gone upstairs to grab a bottle for the baby when I heard movement inside our bedroom.
The door was slightly open.
I slowed without thinking.
The real reckoning was coming
Diane was inside.
