From outside my house, my mother-in-law shouted, “Why is the gate closed?”… A minute later, my husband called me begging me to open it, and I told him, “Put me on speakerphone,” because his whole family was going to find out the truth.

Three months before her sixty-fifth birthday, she announced she would celebrate it there. Not ask—announce.

“I’ll set up lunch in the garden,” she said. “There’s space for everyone, and it’ll look nicer in photos.”

I told her I wasn’t comfortable with it. Sergio asked me to be patient.

“It’s just one day, love.”

But with her, it was never just one day.