But I was looking at her eyes, and her eyes were not the eyes of a woman who’d had too much to drink.

They were clear.

They were watchful.

They moved over me and over the room and settled on Julian with a focus that had nothing loose or blurred in it at all.

“Elena,” she said, letting her voice slur just enough.

“It’s so loud downstairs, and I’m so tired.

Let me lie down in here.

Just for tonight.” I turned to my husband, certain he would say what any husband would say — that this was our wedding night, that his mother could have any other bed in the house, that she could have a car home if it came to that.

Instead Julian did the thing I would come to know better than I ever wanted to.

He looked at me with an apology already sitting on his face, the apology he kept ready for exactly these moments, and he said, “She’s had a lot to drink, honey.

Let her stay a little while.

It’s easier.” It’s easier. I was twenty-six years old and I had been a wife for about four hours, and I did not want to be the bride the family whispered about for fighting her mother-in-law before the last guests had even gone.

So I swallowed it.

I picked up a pillow, and I went downstairs to sleep on the couch on my wedding night, and as I left I glanced back — and caught the look Victoria was giving Julian when she thought no one could see it.