I set down the pastry box and moved quietly toward the sound, my exhaustion from the twelve-hour flight suddenly forgotten, replaced by a growing, unsettling alertness.
What I found in the foyer stopped me completely.
Claire knelt on the marble floor, eight months pregnant, her cardigan sleeves pushed up as she gently worked a washcloth over my mother's bare feet, submerged in a large silver basin of water. Tears streamed silently down her face, her shoulders shaking with the particular, exhausted quality of someone who had been crying for some time before I arrived.
My mother sat above her in the gold brocade armchair, dressed impeccably despite the early hour, one finger jabbing accusatorially toward Claire's bent head.
"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."