Madison Bennett turned twenty-seven in a luxury restaurant in downtown Chicago, but instead of feeling loved, she felt like an outsider at her own birthday dinner.
Her husband, Ethan, sat beside her in a navy suit, checking his phone again and again. Across from them, her mother-in-law, Patricia, smiled with the kind of sweetness that always carried an insult.
“Oh, Madison,” Patricia said, “for someone who stays home all day, you actually managed to look decent tonight.”
Ethan gave an awkward laugh.
But he did not defend her.
He never did.
Madison lowered her eyes and forced a small smile, the kind she had practiced for three years of marriage.
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