I Came Home Unannounced After Four Years Abroad and Found My Wife Starved and Shaved in the Backyard. My Mother Said She’d Brought It on Herself. I Didn’t Yell
My mother was the first to recover.
They always are.
“Damian — oh, thank God you’re home, but sweetheart, this isn’t what it looks like.” The words came fast and smooth, a story she’d clearly told herself so many times she half believed it.
Phedra, she said, had become impossible after she got sick — demanding, ungrateful, always wanting money, breaking things around the house on purpose, even stealing.
Even stealing jewelry.