She was screaming because a source of supply that had run reliably for three years had, without warning, produced a no — and a no, from a person who has only ever said yes, is not a small thing.

It is an earthquake.

It is the ground itself shifting.

And I had just, with two syllables and a laughably small number, set off the first tremor of a quake that would, before the next morning, level everything they had built on the assumption that I would never stop saying yes.

Chapter 3 — Queen of the Castle

Marguerite, my mother-in-law, appeared on the landing, her face already distorted with a blind, practiced fury.