“Nathan, go. I promise I’ll rest.”
He hesitated before kissing my forehead and leaving.
By eleven, my fever was still around 102.
Nathan had called twice to make sure I hadn’t gotten out of bed, and eventually I managed to fall asleep.
I was drifting in and out when, at 11:30, the bedroom door flew open hard enough to strike the wall.
Patricia stood there holding our spare emergency key between two fingers like she’d won something.
“Almost NOON,” she announced, “and here you are, still tucked in like a princess.”
I tried to sit up.
My arms trembled.
“Patricia, I’m sick.”
She walked farther into the room.
“We all get sick, Claire. My generation got up. We took care of our husbands.”
“I have a fever of a hundred and two.”
Her gaze moved across the tissues, medicine, and water beside the bed.
“Nathan’s working while you’re lying here. Get up and make him a proper dinner.”
“I can’t even stand.”
Then Patricia took out her phone.
When she pointed the camera at me, my stomach dropped.
“Patricia, please don’t.”
“Say cheese.”
“Patricia, don’t. I’m begging you.”
She lowered the phone with a satisfied little smile.
“Maybe a little embarrassment will motivate you. Nathan deserves better than this.”
Then she walked away.
Moments later, I heard the front door close.
Ten minutes afterward, my phone buzzed.
My hands shook as I picked it up.
There I was.
My hair was tangled, my eyes swollen, my mouth slightly open as I slept.
Beneath the picture, Patricia had written in her cheerful public voice:
***’Good morning to everyone who actually gets up, goes to work, and takes care of their family instead of sleeping until noon like my DIL.’***
Comments were already appearing.
Women from her church.
Members of her book club.
Former neighbors.
***”Poor Nathan.”***
***”Kids these days.”***
***”In my time, we’d never.”***
I turned the phone face-down.
For eight years, I’d tried to convince myself Patricia’s opinion didn’t matter.
Now she’d handed her judgment of me to hundreds of people.
I cried until my chest hurt more than the fever.
When Nathan came home that evening, I handed him my phone without saying anything.
He read Patricia’s post.
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