I stared at her.
“I spent all afternoon cleaning because nobody else lifted a finger.”
She waved that away.
“That’s what a hostess does.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“That’s what you’ve convinced the women in this family to do.”
Several heads turned.
Not toward me, toward each other.
I noticed something I hadn’t before.
Eli’s older sister avoided Gladys’s eyes.
One of his aunts stared at the floor, and another quietly nodded.
A realization settled over me.
This wasn’t just about me. Gladys had been doing this for years.
I was simply the first person who’d caught it on camera.
Denise commented again.
“She’s treated all of us like this.”
Then another aunt wrote, “I never said anything because I thought it was just me.”
A third comment followed, “Remember Thanksgiving at my house? She criticized every dish I made.”
