You’re in the way, Grandma. You should have died years ago.”
That is what your granddaughter Valerie screams at you in front of twenty-three guests, seconds before her hand cracks across your face so hard your lip splits open against your teeth.
You stumble backward into the mahogany sideboard. Your glasses fall beneath you and snap under your weight. The ivory silk blouse you bought for your seventieth birthday blooms red at the collar, while everyone in your dining room freezes as if they have just witnessed something too ugly to understand.
No one moves.
Not Valerie’s husband.
Not his parents.
Not the polished investors she invited to impress.
Not the women who call themselves her friends and sip champagne from crystal flutes paid for by your money.
They only stare.
