Chapter 7: The Follow-Up
Three days after the rainy Saturday, my mother-in-law called my husband’s phone. He put her on speaker without announcing it. Her voice carried the same careful concern she had used in our kitchen. She asked whether I had “taken the information seriously” and whether we needed to “discuss the future of the marriage like adults.” He answered that the photographs had been explained, the emails reviewed, and Claire Ellison contacted directly. Then he told her that any further material delivered in secret to me would be treated as intentional interference rather than family concern. She was silent for several seconds. When she spoke again the concern had thinned into something sharper. She said he was repeating the same mistake he had made at the wedding—choosing the wrong loyalty. He ended the call without debating the definition of loyalty.
