Chapter 1

My parents traveled a long way from our hometown to see me, so I made a point of asking the housekeeper to cook a few extra dishes. Instead she fried up a single plate of greens.

I stared, baffled. "Violet, why is there only one dish?"

She rolled her eyes at me.

"Mr. Henson's away on business tonight, he won't be home for dinner. Your parents are country folk. They should count themselves lucky to have greens at all."

"With the man of the house gone, you ought to economize. Don't go dragging people home to eat and drink on us whenever you please. You don't have the first idea how to run a household."

Watching her stand there like she owned the place, I laughed.

She'd been a housekeeper in the Henson home for ten years. Did that make her my mother-in-law?

1

"Hurry up and eat, then go home. And don't come around again if there's no reason. Who knows how many germs you dragged in from the countryside."

"Once you're gone I'll have to disinfect the whole house. What a nuisance!"

The housekeeper, Violet Finch, went on and on.

As though she truly were the lady of this house.

And my parents were nothing but filthy freeloaders in her eyes.

My mother twisted the cloth bag in her hands, awkward, and set a little sack of farm-fresh eggs down on the entryway cabinet, glancing at me with great care.

"Monica Pruitt, your father and I just thought, with you carrying the baby, we'd bring you some farm eggs to build your strength back up."

"We won't stay for the meal. We don't want to be any trouble to you."

My father nodded along, his face full of embarrassment, as if they really had done something wrong.

Seeing them so ill at ease, something in my chest ached.

I was three months along. The morning sickness had been bad, and I'd stayed weak the whole time. When my parents heard, they rode eighteen hours on a slow train just to see me.

The whole way, they scrimped on food and drink, only wanting to reach me sooner, to bring me some farm eggs to build me back up.

It broke my heart. I wanted to give them a good meal.

So before I left to pick them up at the station, I'd handed Violet two hundred dollars and told her over and over to buy some good food and have it ready.

But when I brought my parents home, all that greeted them was a plate of greens gone cold, and Violet's insults and her shoving them toward the door.

The thought of it, and the anger I'd been holding down finally broke loose.

"Violet, get this straight. You're a housekeeper my husband pays for. Your job in this house is to cook the meals and keep the place clean."

"What our family eats, how we spend our money, that's our business. It's not your place to point fingers and lecture me on the rules."

Violet planted her hands on her hips, chin high.

"I'm doing this for your own good!"

"What decent woman gorges herself in comfort the minute her husband's away on a trip?"

"A pregnant woman who doesn't work ought to be careful with money in the first place. But not you. You go and drag two country bumpkins home for a feast. Do you think the Henson money falls out of the sky? If I weren't watching over things, you'd have squandered this whole family dry by now."

Hearing that, it all came clear to me.

No wonder that before, when I'd wanted imported gourmet fruit and asked Violet to buy one, she'd dragged her feet and never did. She'd talked me out of it, too.

"That stuff's too rich, it's bad for the baby."

"And it's so expensive, two, three hundred apiece, gone in a few bites. Pure waste of money."

I'd thought she was looking out for me, so I let it go at the time.

Later, when I bought a few maternity outfits, she saw them and kept sighing and muttering.

"Young people these days, they just don't know how to make do. A few hundred dollars for a piece of clothing you'll only wear a few months."

"In our day, we patched one pair of pants and wore them ten years."

Back then I thought she was simply used to pinching pennies, old-fashioned in her thinking.

But now I understood. It wasn't thrift.

She thought of herself as the mistress of this house.

The way she saw it, everything in this home was hers.

Everyone but Fred Henson had to answer to her.

Me included.