“You’re seriously making this decision without me?” I said.
Trey picked his phone back up.
“Mom was right,” he said. “You always make everything difficult.”
He walked out of the kitchen.
I sat there at the table with spilled coffee spreading across the wood, staring at the doorway where he’d been standing.
I was furious.
But I still couldn’t believe Trey actually meant it. He had to be bluffing. Testing me. Repeating something his mother had said without thinking about what it meant.
He couldn’t really give away our house.
Part Two: Marilyn
I need to tell you about Trey’s mother.
Her name is Marilyn Grant. She’s sixty-one. She has frosted blonde hair that she gets done every four weeks at a salon in Jenks, and she wears matching tracksuits in jewel tones. Emerald green. Royal blue. A purple one she calls eggplant.
From the day I met her, Marilyn made it clear she didn’t like me.
It was Trey’s twenty-sixth birthday. He brought me to his parents’ apartment for dinner. I’d made a chocolate cake from scratch, from my grandmother’s recipe. It took me four hours.
Marilyn looked at the cake on her kitchen counter.
“Oh,” she said. “Trey doesn’t really like chocolate.”
Trey had told me chocolate was his favorite. He’d asked for it specifically.
He didn’t say anything.
That was how it went.
For seven years.
At our wedding, she wore white. Not ivory. Not cream. White. A long white dress with a lace jacket.
When I asked Trey about it afterward, he said, “That’s just my mom. Please don’t make a scene.”
At our first Thanksgiving as a married couple, she inspected my mashed potatoes.
“Lumpy,” she said. To the whole table. “Trey’s used to them smooth. I always used a ricer.”
Trey ate his potatoes and said nothing.
When we bought the house on Juniper Lane, she walked through every room with her arms crossed.
She ran her finger along the top of the refrigerator and held it up to show me the dust.
Then she turned to me in my own kitchen and said something I’ve never forgotten.
“You’re not nearly a good enough homemaker,” she said, “to deserve a house like this.”
I turned to Trey. He was standing in the doorway.
He looked at the floor.
“That’s just my mom,” he said quietly. “Please don’t make a scene.”
So yeah.
I’d gotten pretty used to that.
Part Three: Hal
Trey’s father, Hal, was different.
He’s sixty-six. A retired machinist who worked thirty years at a factory in Tulsa that made oil field equipment. He’s quiet and gentle, with big rough hands and a habit of humming old Merle Haggard songs under his breath.
He was the only one in Trey’s family who was ever kind to me.
At that first birthday dinner, after Marilyn insulted my cake, Hal waited until she went to the bathroom.
Then he cut himself a big slice. He ate it standing at the counter.
“Best cake I’ve had in twenty years,” he said quietly. “Don’t tell Marilyn.”
At our wedding, he danced with me. He stepped on my feet three times and apologized every time.
When I cried at the end of the night, overwhelmed and exhausted, he found me on the back steps of the reception hall and sat down next to me.
“She’ll come around,” he said. “Or she won’t. Either way, you’re family now. To me.”
Hal had been sick for about a year.
Parkinson’s. Early stage. His hands shook. He walked slower. He’d stopped driving at night.
Marilyn told everyone it was nothing. She said he was just getting old.
They lived in a one-bedroom apartment in an older complex on the south side of Tulsa. Second floor. No elevator.
I’d been there maybe a dozen times in seven years. It was small and cramped and smelled like cigarette smoke from the neighbors. Marilyn kept it spotless.
They’d lived there for fifteen years. Since they’d lost their house in 2009, when the factory had layoffs and Hal was out of work for eight months.
Marilyn never talked about that either.
