"You missed a spot near my heel," my mother snapped. "Honestly, I don't understand how someone can be this incompetent at the simplest task. My own mother taught me proper foot care when I was half your age."
"I'm sorry," Claire whispered, her voice thick with tears. "I'm trying, Margaret."
"Trying isn't the same as succeeding," my mother said coldly. "This family has standards, Claire. If you can't meet basic expectations of respect for your elders, perhaps you should reconsider whether you truly belong in this house at all."
I stood frozen in the doorway, my travel bag still slung over my shoulder, the pastry box growing cold on the kitchen counter behind me, watching a scene I could not fully process — my pregnant wife on her knees on hard marble, performing what could only be described as a deliberately humiliating ritual, while my mother watched with the same cold satisfaction I'd occasionally glimpsed but never fully witnessed directed at Claire before.