“I’m going somewhere I can sleep without being ordered to work.”

“Mom was just stressed.”

I had heard that sentence for three years.

It explained the rude comments about my cooking, the way she replaced my grocery lists with her own, the Christmas when she announced that my infertility worries were proof I wasn’t ready for motherhood.

Now it was being used to excuse demanding dinner from a woman discharged after emergency surgery.

On the refrigerator door hung a sheet of paper titled HOUSEHOLD EXPECTATIONS.