too much trouble.

Arthur eventually confronted her.

I didn’t go.

That was his conversation.

When he returned, he looked exhausted but strangely lighter.

“She admitted it.”

“All of it?”

He sat beside me.

“She said Dad was weak. She said she was protecting me.”

I shook my head.

“From what?”

“From choosing him.”

There it was.

The entire pattern in one sentence.

Deborah had not wanted peace.

She had wanted control.

Arthur looked toward the kitchen where, months earlier, he had stared at his plate while his mother told me