The gifts, the seating, the vocabulary, the golden rule, all of it was control wearing the mask of graciousness, dominance dressed up as generosity.

She had built an entire world in which she got to decide everyone’s place, and had arranged that world so cleverly that to resist any part of it was to seem ungrateful, difficult, unkind to a generous old woman.

This is the particular genius of a certain kind of domestic tyrant, the ones who never raise a hand or even, usually, a voice.

They rule through the manipulation of appearances, through the weaponizing of etiquette and hospitality and family feeling, so that their victims are always the ones who look bad for objecting.