Chapter 2

Ethel's high-and-mighty face went a deep, blotchy red the moment I finished with her.

Sensing she couldn't handle me directly, she swung her aim at Dustin.

"Dustin, this is the fine wife you brought home? Let me tell you, we do not approve of this marriage."

"Mom, Amy and I already signed the papers. We're legally married now."

Ethel clearly froze for a beat, and Phineas, who'd been reading his newspaper, set it aside.

At last they were actually sizing me up, their new daughter-in-law.

"No. A woman who dares to talk back to her elders is not someone this family will take."

Watching Ethel bear down like that, I finally understood why Dustin's last two girlfriends had both been pushed into breaking up with him.

"Does it matter whether you'll take me? We're legally married now. If you've got it in you, make your son divorce me."

Ethel's eyes shot straight to Dustin.

"Dustin, you take me down to the county clerk's office right now and get the divorce filed."

Dustin's fists clenched in anger, but the second he met his mother's dark, sullen face, all the fight went out of him like air from a deflated ball, and he took a fearful step back.

"Fine, Dustin. So your wings have hardened, have they? You won't even listen to me now. Just you wait."

With that, Ethel pulled out her phone and dialed a number.

"Get back here, sweetie. Your brother brought home some wife, and she's got the nerve to talk back to me."

She hung up and made another call.

"Gwyneth Lambert, honey, come home quick. Dustin brought a wife home, and she dares to talk back to me."

Two calls done, Ethel stretched out on the sofa, crossed her legs, and settled in with the look of someone who had me right where she wanted me.

I stretched out on the sofa too, crossed my legs, glanced at Dustin beside me, and said flatly, "Go downstairs and buy me a bubble tea."

Dustin heard it and went straight for the door, only for Ethel to call him back.

"Dustin, are you even a man? She says jump and you jump? Doesn't she have her own legs?"

Seeing Dustin's feet stop, I shot him a hard look.

"Dustin, if you don't go today, I'm divorcing you on the spot."

Dustin didn't say a word after that. He walked out the door, and let Ethel curse and threaten at his back without paying it any mind.

In the end all Ethel could do was point that finger back at me.

"Amy, let me tell you something. Now that you've come through the Lambert family door, you'll follow the Lambert family rules."

"Didn't you just say the Lambert family wouldn't dare take a daughter-in-law like me?"

I cut a glance at her and kept going. "Ms. Chavez, tell me, which of those lines is the true one and which is the false one? Or is it because you're a university professor, so talking to you is like a reading-comprehension test, and you're the only one who gets to decide what it all means?"

"Heh heh…"

Phineas couldn't hold it in and let out a laugh, only to get stared right back into silence by one look from Ethel.

Just then came a knock at the door.

The first through it were a couple in their thirties.

They were Dustin's older brother, Bernard Lambert, and his wife, Edith Finch, both senior managers at their company, dressed in business suits, carrying the air of executives even here at home.

Behind them followed a woman of about thirty as well. Dustin had shown me her photo too, his older sister, Gwyneth, a high school teacher with a natural sternness to her face.

Now I got it, why Dustin had no say at all in this house. Because he was just an ordinary employee.

Dustin jogged the last few steps, pressed the bubble tea into my hand, then pulled me to my feet to make the introductions.

"Amy, this is my big brother and his wife, and this is my sister."

I'd barely started to greet them when Bernard waved a hand and said, "Dustin, marriage is one of the biggest things in life. Don't you think this was awfully rushed?"