Sometimes dignity was reading the documents everyone else ignored.
Sometimes it was refusing to cover one more expense in silence.
Sometimes it was placing a salad bowl on the table, walking out of the room, and allowing the truth to arrive without shouting.
The Vances still had their history.
Beverly still had her pearls.
Julian still had work to do if our marriage was going to survive.
And Tidesberry still stood above the Pacific, its windows glowing against the fog.
But the old arrangement was finished.
No one at that table could pretend otherwise.
I had spent ten years waiting for them to make room for me.
In the end, I did not need them to.
I had my own seat, my own signature, and the one thing Beverly had never expected me to claim.
Authority without asking her permission.
