Derek’s mother, Patricia.
Patricia never openly said she disliked the fact that Derek was marrying a widow with a child.
She was too polished for that.
Instead, she delivered criticism in perfectly pleasant sentences that sometimes took ten minutes to recognize as insults.
She was also obsessed with perfection.
Her house looked like a magazine spread. Towels were folded evenly. Pillows sat at matching angles. Family photos were displayed in identical silver frames.
And once wedding planning began, Patricia became even more demanding.
She obsessed over flowers, napkins, seating arrangements, centerpieces—and especially photographs.
“Photos last forever,” she constantly reminded us.
At first, I thought it was annoying but harmless.
Then Lily became part of the problem.
Lily has vitiligo.
There are pale patches across her fingers, elbows, knees, and one side of her neck. To me, they were simply part of her—no different from her brown eyes or the gap between her front teeth.
Recently, however, Lily had started realizing that other people sometimes noticed them.
One afternoon, she asked me whether someone could “catch” her spots because a boy at school had called them weird.
I told her the truth.
“No. They’re not contagious. And your skin isn’t weird.”
