Respect is a decision a person makes about your basic humanity, and it holds, or it doesn’t, under exactly the pressure that reveals everything.

I had tested the wrong variable.

Florence’s bucket tested the right one, and Jonathan failed it in the first hour.

Chapter 4 — The Slap

Jonathan came in following the sound of his mother’s screaming, and I watched his face, and I saw him choose.

“Tell your new wife to stop acting like an entitled princess,” Florence spat.

“She’s refusing to contribute to this family.” Jonathan looked at the bucket, and then at me, with an irritation I had never once seen in two years of his careful courtship.

“Just listen to my mother, Charlotte,” he muttered.