Through the blinding pain, I heard Vivian’s low, satisfied chuckle. “A filthy, penniless woman like you doesn’t belong in this family,” she said. “Consider it a deep clean.”

I collapsed against my suitcase, gasping, the chemicals eating at the tissue of my eyes. Through a world dissolving into gray shadows, I watched a pair of Italian loafers move into my line of sight.

Daniel stepped over me, adjusting his stride to keep his mother’s white rug clear of my tears.

The emergency-room physician did not share Daniel’s read on my “hysteria.” He classified it as severe chemical burns to both corneas.

Nurses flushed my eyes with saline for what felt like hours. I lay shaking under a thin hospital blanket, my vision reduced to painful shapes, listening to Daniel play his role for the security guard outside my curtain.

“It was a freak accident,” he said, in the practiced sigh he usually saved for difficult waiters. “My wife and my mother were having a minor disagreement about chores.