And that was it.
We were inseparable within a month.
He’d show up at my apartment with takeout and flowers. Not roses, but wildflowers from the farmers market because I’d mentioned once that roses felt generic.
He remembered everything.
My favorite movie, my coffee order, the name of my childhood dog.
When my car broke down on I-85 at 11 at night, he drove 40 minutes to sit with me while we waited for the tow truck. And he brought me a blanket and a thermos of hot chocolate because he said, “Nobody should wait on the highway without hot chocolate.”
By month three, I’d met his family.
And that’s where things get complicated.
Karen Whitfield was a woman who smiled with her mouth, but never with her eyes.
She was the kind of mother-in-law you see in movies, perfectly coiffed blonde hair, Lilly Pulitzer dresses, monogrammed everything.
She ran the Whitfield household like a CEO runs a Fortune 500 company, and everyone fell in line.
Doug, Michael’s father, was a quiet man who’d made good money in commercial real estate and now spent his retirement playing golf and agreeing with whatever Karen said.
The first time I had dinner at their house, Karen looked me up and down.
I was wearing a sundress and sandals.
“Oh, how casual. Michael didn’t tell you this was a sit-down dinner.”
He had not, in fact, told me because it wasn’t. It was a Tuesday night and they were having pot roast.
“Mom, she looks great,” Michael said, squeezing my hand under the table.
“Of course she does, sweetheart. I just wouldn’t want her to feel underdressed.”
Karen smiled that smile, the one I’d come to know very, very well.
Jennifer, Michael’s older sister, was Karen’s carbon copy. Same hair, same smile, same ability to deliver an insult wrapped in a compliment.
Her husband Todd was a corporate attorney who talked about his car a lot.
Brandon, the younger brother, was the only one who seemed genuinely warm. He hugged me the first time we met and said, “Thank God, someone normal.”
I should have listened to Brandon more carefully.
Michael proposed on a Saturday morning in our favorite park nine months after that barbecue. He got down on one knee next to the fountain where we’d had our third date, and I said yes before he even finished the question.
The ring was beautiful, a princess cut diamond, just over one carat.
I found out later that Karen had picked it out, but at the time, I didn’t care.
We got married the following spring in a ceremony that Karen orchestrated down to the last detail.
I wanted a small wedding, maybe 60 people, outdoors.
We had 220 guests at the Charlotte Country Club, and I knew maybe 40 of them.
My parents, who’d driven up from Savannah, looked overwhelmed the entire time. My mom kept smoothing her dress like she was afraid she’d chosen wrong.
“Your family is a lot,” my best friend Dana whispered to me during the reception.
“They’re just traditional,” I said. “They’ll warm up.”
They did not warm up.
After the wedding, Michael and I moved into a house in the suburbs, a four-bedroom colonial in a neighborhood with an HOA that sent you letters if your grass was half an inch too tall.
Karen found the house.
Karen recommended the realtor.
Karen came with us to the closing and sat next to the notary, pointing out things in the paperwork that she thought we should reconsider.
The house was in both our names, but the down payment, $62,000, came from Michael’s trust fund, which was technically Whitfield family money.
Karen made sure I knew this.
Not directly, of course.
She’d say things like, “It’s so nice that Michael could provide this for you both.”
Or, “This neighborhood is really a step up, isn’t it, Ashley?”
I let it go.
I let everything go in those early months because I was happy.
