After dinner, Aurelia stood up and walked outside. She soon came back from the car holding three pretty gift boxes.
She handed one toward me, her voice soft and polite.
“This is for you, Lyra. Thank you for these years of tiring work, thank you for looking after Aiden so well.”
I lowered my eyes and did not lift my hand to take it.
Aiden’s neat brows pulled together right away and the air around us seemed to stop for a moment.
“Aurelia is kindly giving you a gift, Lyra. Don’t act like you don’t appreciate it.”
“That’s right, Mom, how can you be so thoughtless?”
The father and son’s yelling pressed down on me and I felt a tight ache in my chest, almost making it hard to breathe.
I raised my eyes toward Aurelia.
She kept smiling, her smile soft and calm, but a bit of open self-satisfaction showed in her eyes.
I stayed quiet for a moment, then at last reached out and took the gift box.
As I sat back down at the table, I watched Aiden eagerly opening the gift Aurelia had given him, his eyes bright, even showing a bit of shyness.
This side of Aiden was frighteningly strange to me.
In seven years of marriage, he never showed this kind of look in front of me.
With me, he was always annoyed, distant and quick to be rude and blame.
I always knew that marrying him had been a step upward for me.
After dinner, a polite guest should have left long ago, but Aurelia stayed, cheerfully continuing her talk with Aiden about their funny moments studying abroad.
Isaiah sat near them, listening closely.
I looked at the clock on the wall, pressed my lips together and stayed quiet.
“I’m getting thirsty after talking for so long,” Aurelia said with a smile. “Aiden, is there anything to drink?”
“Lyra, go get a glass of water,” Aiden said lightly, his tone as casual as if he were talking to a helper.
“Me too! I want hot chocolate!” Isaiah yelled right away.
I answered by habit, “It’s too late, you can’t drink anything too sweet. Isaiah, a glass of milk is fine.”
Isaiah instantly got upset, lowering his head and sulking as he played with his building blocks.
“If he wants to drink, let him drink. Why are you so nosy?” Aiden’s tone turned clearly colder. “The child is still young, shouldn’t he enjoy more fun?”
He rarely stepped into my raising of Isaiah.
But today, seeing the child’s upset look, he seemed to suddenly think that all these years, I had been treating Isaiah badly.
“Let me say one more thing, Lyra,” he looked at me, his tone annoyed, “Your way of teaching your child is wrong. Holding back even a glass of juice will surely make him push back in the future.”
“The day he starts to hate you as his mother, it will be too late for you to regret.” Aurelia let out a soft sigh. Every word she spoke felt like an unseen but very sharp cut, hitting me again and again.
Looking at Isaiah’s slowly reddening eyes, I didn’t know what else to say.
Standing across from me were three people.
And I, clearly, had turned into the one pushed aside.
In the end, I gave in.
I turned and walked into the kitchen, poured Aurelia a glass of hot water and made a cup of hot chocolate as Isaiah had asked for.
But when I handed the water to Aurelia, the hand she used to take the cup suddenly let go.
The next second, the burning hot water splashed all over her legs.
“Ah!”
