When Judge Elden Marwick looked down at my coffee-stained apron, asking if my ‘genius brain’ could count beyond ten, and let my parents laugh as if they were already burying me, he didn’t know that the woman they were mocking had a tape recorder in her pocket, a Harvard law degree in her briefcase, and a grandmother who had prepared a final trap specifically for rooms like this.

That Thanksgiving, my parents had catered dinner because neither of them really knew how to turn on the oven. The table was long and immaculate. My mother was talking about a patio renovation.

My father was discussing some half-built winery venture as if it were already on the cover of a business magazine. I had just brought home straight A’s, but no one had asked to see the report card. I sat at the far end of the table reading because I had learned early that trying to enter the conversation only made everyone slightly irritated.

Eleanor watched all of it in silence for twenty minutes, cutting her turkey with small, precise movements. Then she set down her fork and said, “She is dying here.”

The table went quiet. My father blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“Wanda,” Eleanor said, pointing her knife at me. “She is withering. You feed her, you clothe her, you educate her, but you treat her like a decorative object you haven’t found a place for.”