Instead she glanced at the seat, then at me, then back at the room in that breezy managerial way she had when she was smoothing over something already decided.
“She’s new here,” she said, as if this explained anything. “We figured you’d be fine standing.”
Standing.
There are moments when humiliation doesn’t arrive as a flash of heat. It arrives cold. Quiet. It slips under the ribs and sits there, a neat blade turned sideways. That was what it felt like. Not rage, not yet. Just a sudden private understanding that everyone else in the room had already had a conversation about space, belonging, priorities, and I had not been part of it.
Brian was at the far end of the table, one arm slung over the back of his chair, looking infuriatingly comfortable. His fiancée sat beside the pink note chair in a sweater dress, cheeks pink from either wine or the heat in the house, smiling uncertainly like somebody who had walked into the middle of a story and sensed too late that she was on the wrong page. My sister had a glass in her hand and that expression she always wore when something awkward was happening and she had decided in advance not to help. Dad looked up from carving and then immediately looked back down as if the ham had suddenly become a matter of national security.
