The slap hit before I could even finish saying, “This is my house.” My mother-in-law smiled at the mark on my cheek and pointed at the front door. “Don’t like it? Get out.”
For three seconds, no one moved.
My husband, Eric, stood by the staircase with his hands in his pockets, avoiding my eyes. Behind him sat two suitcases, three moving boxes, and his twenty-six-year-old nephew, Kyle, stretched across my cream sofa with his shoes on the cushions.
I had been away at a three-day conference in Chicago. When
