Chapter 10
Katherine eventually explained the plate.
Why humiliate Clara about eating last?
It was not random cruelty.
Worse.
She had been teaching hierarchy.
In the old D’Angelo houses, children ate after senior adults during formal crisis gatherings.
Symbolic discipline.
The idea was that children learned the family survived by respecting order.
Sofia hated it.
I had abolished it casually after becoming head.
Katherine revived it privately.
She wanted Clara prepared for the life she believed would come after me.
“When your father’s gone, you’ll learn to eat last.”
Not merely insult.
Curriculum.
That made me angrier.
Because she had built an entire education around my absence.
I told her:
“You were raising my daughter for my death while I was still sitting beside her.”
Katherine finally cried.
Good.
May you like
Not because I wanted pain.
Because understanding had reached somewhere argument had not.
