Chapter 4
Delia denied that immediately.
“I never said you ordered it.”
Vincent looked at her.
“No.”
Interesting.
Then:
“You said Mr. Montoro expected his wife to understand service before she represented the family publicly.”
Different wording.
Same effect.
Delia was clever enough not to forge my voice.
She offered interpretation.
Expectation.
Tradition.
Things difficult to disprove while I was away.
I turned to Sofia.
“Did she say that to you too?”
“Yes.”
My jaw tightened.
Marcus, still sitting against the overturned pastry cart, laughed bitterly.
“You’re acting like Delia invented the whole idea.”
I looked at him.
“Explain.”
He wiped his mouth.
No blood.
Only humiliation.
“Your father believed everyone in the household should know the work.”
True.
I had washed dishes at fourteen.
Swept garages at fifteen.
Loaded trucks at sixteen.
Not punishment.
Training.
Marcus continued:
“Your mother did kitchen work before she married into Montoro.”
Also true.
Delia seized on it.
“There.”
Her eyes brightened.
“Mother earned that brooch.”
I stared at her.
“No.”
“She worked.”
“She was poor.”
“She learned.”
“She survived.”
“And none of that was the price of marrying Father.”
Delia’s certainty faltered.
There was the distortion.
Our mother had worked in a bakery kitchen before meeting our father.
Over the years, family mythology changed.
Mother knew hard work.
Mother valued service.
Mother never acted superior to staff.
True.
Then somehow:
Mother earned her place through labor.
False.
Delia had turned biography into initiation.
Sofia’s hands became proof.
Except Mother would have despised this.
She used to slap my wrist when I left a plate for someone else to carry because I was “too important.”
Not because servants deserved humiliation.
Because nobody did.
I looked at Delia.
“You turned Mother’s life into a test she never created.”
Her face tightened.
Then Sofia whispered:
“She said your mother would never have accepted me otherwise.”
That sentence changed my anger.
Delia had not only imposed work.
May you like
She had recruited a dead woman as judge.
My wife had spent twelve days trying to win approval from a mother-in-law buried sixteen years ago.
