Chapter Four
Family Loyalty Test
Vivian's Sunday dinners were never really about the food, even though the food was always good.
They were about seating charts nobody wrote down, about who got asked which question, about who got left out of a conversation so smoothly you almost didn't notice until you were driving home and it hit you all at once.
I noticed the seating the second I walked into the dining room that Sunday.
"Elena, sweetheart, you're down there." Vivian pointed to the far end of the table, near Nikhil's kids and their booster seats, while she patted the chair right beside her own. "Priya, darling, come sit up here with me."
Priya glanced at me before she sat, a quick flicker of something, maybe apology, maybe not, and then she took the seat beside my mother in law like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Where's Damon sitting?" I asked, mostly just to have something to say.
"Oh, he'll be wherever," Vivian said, waving a hand. "Sit, sit, the roast is getting cold."
Damon came in a few minutes later, freshly showered from a run, and slid into the seat directly across from Priya without seeming to think twice about it.
I sat at the far end near the kids, cutting up chicken for my nephew because nobody else was doing it, and watched the whole table unfold from a distance like I was watching a play I hadn't been given a script for.
"Priya, how's the shop coming along?" Vivian asked, leaning in with real interest, the kind of interest she rarely showed me even after six years of marriage into this family.
"It's coming along," Priya said. "Slow, but steady. I finally got the lease signed on the space downtown."
"Wonderful. You've worked so hard for this. Marcus would be proud."
"Thank you, Vivian. That means a lot."
I watched Damon's face soften at the mention of Marcus, the same softness I'd seen creep into his voice in that hallway.
"Elena," Vivian called down the table, not even really looking at me, "how's your little design hobby coming along? Still doing that?"
Little design hobby. Six years, half a career, a business partner I'd walked away from, reduced to four words tossed down the table like a scrap for a dog.
"I've actually been thinking about getting back into it," I said, keeping my voice steady.
"That's nice." She turned right back to Priya before I finished the sentence. "Priya, you must tell me more about the retail space. Is it the one on Baldwin Street?"
I cut another piece of chicken for my nephew and said nothing.
This wasn't new, exactly. Vivian had never fully warmed to me the way mothers in law are supposed to in the movies.
But there was something different about this Sunday, something sharper in the way she kept steering every conversation toward Priya, and kept finding small ways to shrink me down at my own family dinner table.
"You know," Vivian said later, once the plates had been cleared and the kids had run off to the living room, "family is about loyalty. Real loyalty. Not just the easy kind."
She was looking at me when she said it. Not directly, but close enough that I knew the words were meant for me.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Just that some people forget what family actually requires of them. The sacrifices. The give and take. It's easy to love someone when things are simple. Real families show up when things get complicated."
"I've shown up plenty, Vivian."
"Have you?" She smiled, sweet as sugar, cruel underneath it. "I only ask because Priya has been through so much this year, and I notice you two haven't been spending as much time together as you used to. Families should lean on each other in hard times, don't you think?"
"Priya's not family," I said. "She's my best friend."
"Well." Vivian sipped her wine. "She might as well be, the way this family has taken her in. Marcus's death hit all of us hard. We couldn't just let her fall apart alone."
Nikhil, who'd been quiet through most of this, suddenly found something very interesting in his phone. Damon, sitting a few chairs down, cleared his throat and reached for his water glass.
"Nobody's saying she should be alone," I said carefully. "I care about Priya too."
"Do you?" Vivian tilted her head. "Because from where I sit, it looks like Damon's the one carrying most of that weight. He's a good son. Always has been. He knows what real loyalty looks like."
The words landed exactly where she wanted them to land. I felt my face go hot.
"What exactly are you implying, Vivian?"
"I'm not implying anything, dear. I'm just saying that a marriage takes work from both sides. And sometimes, when a wife gets too wrapped up in her own little pursuits, other people have to step up and fill the gaps. That's all I'm saying."
Little pursuits. There it was again, that word she kept using to make six years of my life sound like a hobby I'd picked up and set down on a whim.
I looked at Damon, waiting for him to say something, anything, to defend me the way a husband should when his mother takes a shot like that across a dinner table. He was still looking at his water glass.
"Damon," I said. "Anything you want to add?"
He looked up, caught between me and his mother, and I watched him choose the coward's path, the one he always chose when Vivian was in the room.
"Mom, let's not do this right now."
Not a defense. Not a correction. Just a request to move on, like I was making a scene instead of standing up for myself against a woman who'd just accused me of neglecting my own marriage in front of the entire family.
"I'm just being honest," Vivian said, all innocence. "Someone has to be."
Priya, at least, had the decency to look uncomfortable. She reached over and touched Vivian's arm.
"Vivian, I don't think that's fair to Elena. She's been amazing to me too."
"Of course, of course." Vivian patted Priya's hand and gave me a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I'm sure Elena's doing her best."
Her best. Like I was a child who'd turned in a mediocre school project.
I excused myself not long after that, went to find the bathroom just to have somewhere to stand alone for a minute, hands braced on the edge of the sink, staring at a woman in the mirror who looked a lot more tired than she used to.
When I came back out, I passed the hallway near Vivian's study, the same layout as the one at the gala, some strange echo of that night, and I heard voices again, low ones, coming from behind a half closed door.
I stopped without meaning to.
"She's asking too many questions," Vivian was saying.
"She has a right to ask questions, Mom." Damon's voice, tired.
"Not if it puts everything at risk. You know what's at stake here. The company, the family name, everything your father built. We can't afford a scandal right now, not with the merger coming up."
"Nothing's happening that would cause a scandal."
"Then keep it that way. And keep her calm. I don't care how you do it, Damon, but keep Elena calm and keep her out of business she doesn't need to be in."
Business she doesn't need to be in. I stood frozen in that hallway for the second time in two weeks, listening to my husband's mother talk about me like I was a liability to be managed instead of a person, instead of her son's wife, instead of someone who'd given up six years of her own life for this family.
I didn't wait to hear Damon's answer. I walked back to the dining room with my heart pounding so hard I was sure someone could hear it, and I sat down at the far end of the table again, back near the empty booster seats, and folded my hands in my lap so nobody would see them shaking.
Priya found me there a few minutes later, sliding into the seat beside me, the one that had been empty all through dinner.
"You okay?" she asked. "Vivian can be a lot sometimes. I don't think she means half of what she says."
"She means all of it," I said. "Every word."
Priya didn't argue with that. She just sat with me quietly for a moment, and for a second I almost let myself lean into the comfort of it, the old familiar comfort of my best friend beside me.
But then I remembered the hallway at the gala. And I remembered this hallway, just now, Vivian's voice saying keep her out of business she doesn't need to be in, like there was a business, like there was something real happening that the whole family had already agreed to hide from me.
"Priya," I said quietly. "What aren't you telling me?"
Her face went carefully blank, the same practiced blank I'd seen at the coffee shop.
"I don't know what you mean."
"I think you do."
She didn't answer that. She just reached for her wine glass and took a slow sip, and in that silence, in that refusal to meet my eyes, I heard an answer louder than anything she could have said out loud.
Something was happening in this family. Something bigger than a widow needing comfort, something bigger than a husband's misplaced guilt. And every single person at that table, Vivian, Damon, even my own best friend, had decided together that I was the last one who deserved to know what it was.
I drove home alone that night, Damon staying behind to talk business with Nikhil, and somewhere on that dark highway, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, I made myself a promise.
Whatever they were hiding, I was going to find it. Every last piece of it. And this time, no amount of sweet smiles or careful silences was going to stop me.