For years, inside that family, I had made myself smaller than I was.

I had learned to speak less at their dinners, to defer to their opinions, to hide the sharp and capable and formidable professional I was at the office behind a soft, accommodating, agreeable wife at home, because that was the version of me the Vances rewarded and the version of me that kept their peace.

I had a decade of high-stakes expertise, and I had checked it at the door of my own marriage, day after day, until my in-laws had quite reasonably concluded that the meek woman they saw was the only woman there was.

I had, in a sense, curated my own underestimation.