Chapter 3My Daughter Called Me Her Nanny

I froze, the sting on my hand barely registering over the ringing in my ears.

There had been twelve wings on that plate.

Mia had eaten four. Trent had eaten three. My mother-in-law, Helen, had eaten two. There were exactly three left.

I hadn't had a single one.

"Grandma and Daddy have already had theirs," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "Mommy hasn't eaten yet."

Mia looked at me with staggering entitlement. "There are three left. Daddy, Grandma, and I get one each. If you eat one, we can't divide it equally."

The blood rushed to my head. I stared at my six-year-old daughter, utterly completely blindsided.

Helen reached over, picking up one of the remaining wings and placing it onto Mia's plate, her eyes crinkling with fond approval. "Our Mia is such a good girl. So sweet, always thinking of her daddy and her grandma."

With that, Helen picked up the last two wings, dropping one onto Trent's plate and the other onto her own.

Only then did she lift her chin to look at me, her face twisting in pure disdain. "Paige, you're a grown woman. Are you seriously fighting a child for food?"

Trent, forever the peacekeeper of his own comfort, chimed in smoothly. "Paige, come on, Mia's just playing with you. Besides, weren't you talking about going on a diet? Have some more of the salad."

"Exactly," Helen scoffed. "Look at the state of you. Dressing like you’re off to collect scrap metal to pick up the kid. Have you no shame? Mia told me everything as soon as she got home. How is the poor girl supposed to hold her head up around her classmates when you look like that?"

"Yeah, Mommy," Mia chimed in, her mouth full of chicken. "Don't eat it. You're too fat anyway. You need to diet."

I set my fork down. I looked at the empty serving platter, and I felt something deep inside me snap, crystallizing into pure, arctic ice.

The last time I made this, Mia had complained they weren't flavorful enough. So today, I had marinated them for two extra hours.

I had gone to the butcher to pick out the best cuts. I had minced every single clove of garlic by hand. I had scrubbed the cast-iron skillet until it gleamed.

I had stood in that kitchen for an hour.

And at the end of it all, I wasn't even deemed worthy of a single bite.

I didn't pick my fork back up.

I didn't swallow my pride and stay silent like I had a thousand times before.

I stood up, grabbed the platter of chicken wings, the salad, the braised fish, and the soup, and dumped every last bit of it straight into the garbage can.

The entire room went dead silent.

Helen was the first to recover. She slammed her hand flat against the table. "Paige, have you lost your mind?! What are you doing throwing perfectly good food away!"

Trent shot up from his chair, pointing a finger at me. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

I ignored them. I crouched down so I was eye-level with my daughter.

"Mia. I have raised you for six years, and I don't even deserve a piece of chicken?"

Mia burst into terrified, wailing sobs.

Helen lunged forward, pulling the girl to her chest, screaming at me. "She's a child! Why are you bullying a child! Is it really that serious?!"

Trent stepped toward me, his face red. "She's right! It's just a damn chicken wing! Do you really need to throw a psycho tantrum over it?"

Just a chicken wing?

I stood up slowly, looking at the three of them. The family I had built.

"Everyone in this house is allowed to eat the food I cook, except me. Fine. Then I'm done cooking."

I turned on my heel, walked into the master bedroom, and shut the door.

Outside, Helen's shrill voice bled through the wood. "Spoiled brat! Over nothing! If she won't cook, fine! My son makes enough money to take us to a restaurant!"

Trent’s voice followed, soothing her. "Mom, don't let it get your blood pressure up. She’s probably pre-menopausal or something. Just ignore her."

I leaned my back against the heavy wooden door, listening to them, and suddenly found myself wanting to laugh.

I had served as the lifeblood of this family for six years. I flipped one table, and suddenly I was the crazy woman.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

It was a notification from the parents' group chat. The teacher had posted an announcement:

"Congratulations to Mia for winning first place in the first-grade essay contest with her piece, 'My Mother'!"

I tapped on the attached photo of the handwritten essay.

"My mother is a piano teacher."

"She is very beautiful, and she has a very gentle voice. Every time she picks me up from school, all my friends tell me my mommy is so pretty."

"She is very classy and smart, and she plays the piano beautifully. I love my mommy the most. She is the best person I've ever met."

I stared at the glowing screen, reading every single word.

My eyes began to burn.

Because the mother in my daughter's essay wasn't me. It was her piano teacher, Queena.

I wiped roughly at the corner of my eye.

I couldn't figure out when it happened. When did my little girl change so much?

She used to cling to me. When she was a toddler, she would crawl under my covers every single night, begging me to read her Peppa Pig books. I would read them over and over until she finally drifted off, her soft little cheek pressed flush against my arm.

Before I married Trent, I used to be just like Queena. Cultured. Gentle. Put-together.

But then I got married. I had a baby. My entire universe shrank to the perimeter of a kitchen stove.

Standing in the kitchen for hours every night, my skin constantly blasted by cooking steam, my hands perpetually pruned from washing dishes in freezing water. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year, on an endless, looping track.

I took care of everyone else, and in the process, I ground myself down into a tired, invisible ghost of a woman.

I took a long, shaky breath. Then, I pulled up my contacts and called my parents.

"Dad? Mom? That next round of funding you were planning to inject into Trent's company? Put a freeze on it."

"There's something I need to figure out first."