My mother had died when I was young.
My father and I were close.
That was enough, or at least I thought it should have been.
At the beginning, Thomas made my silence feel romantic.
He said he loved that I wasn’t impressed by status.
He liked that I didn’t ask about billable hours, club memberships, or whose last name opened doors.
He said I made him feel grounded.
Later, I understood what he really liked was that I came into his world without demanding space in it.
His mother, Margaret Whitmore, began testing me almost as soon as we were engaged.
She asked where my family summered, which schools my cousins attended, whether my father belonged to the right circles.
I answered politely and vaguely.
She interpreted privacy as smallness.
When I didn’t defend myself, she took it as proof that she had measured me correctly.
