“That seat is for my mother,” she shouted, pointing her finger at me as if I were a naughty child. “You sit over there next to the kitchen in case we need anything served.”
The eyes of her friends pierced right through me. Some looked down, embarrassed. Others smiled with that silent cruelty that only women know. Matt, my son, my own flesh and blood, stood next to Jessica with his mouth open, but without words, without a single word to defend me.
To understand how I ended up kicking my own family out of my house, I need to take you back three years, to the day Matt arrived with a smile I had not seen on his face since he was a teenager.
“Mom, I met someone.”
He told me that April afternoon, his eyes shining like carnival lights. I was in the backyard pruning my rose bushes. I took off my gardening gloves and looked at him. My son was thirty-four years old and had just come out of two difficult relationships. Seeing him like this, so excited, filled me with hope.
