Chapter 9 — The Trap of the Smile

The trap worked like this, and Beatrice had used it on this family for as long as anyone could remember, so smoothly that most people never even saw the mechanism.

If we objected, if I stood up and named the insult out loud on Christmas morning, then we became the villains of the scene.

We became the dramatic, ungrateful holiday-ruiners who could not accept a gift graciously, who had caused an ugly confrontation in front of the children over a candle, of all things.

Beatrice would widen her eyes and play the wounded innocent, would ask, with hurt bewilderment, what on earth she had done wrong, and the whole extended family, trained by years of her rule, would rush to smooth it over, and somehow, by the end of it, we would be the ones apologizing.