Dealing With Difficult Inlaws

After ten minutes of complete dumbfoundment, Gavin finally snapped out of it.

"Should you be offended? he repeated. "Are you retarded? Of course, you should! I called you overqualified for unemployment! That's a good one! That took me three days to workshop! I had to research all the historical figures I compared you to! I put actual effort into this!"

Ethan offered a quiet, unshakeable smile. "If I got offended every time someone made a joke about me... I'd never have time to finish making breakfast." He paused, then added, "Besides, I've heard worse. Last week, Cousin Marcus told me I was proof that evolution can sometimes go backwards. I'm still not sure what that means, but it was creative. I respect the craft."

Marcus, who had been mid-sip of his coffee, nearly choked. His ears went red. "It—it was a good line! I came up with it during my existential crisis!"

"Also, Penelope told me I was 'the human equivalent of a participation trophy,' which I thought was particularly inspired," Ethan continued, his tone entirely conversational, as if discussing the weather. "That one's actually been living rent-free in my head for a few days. It's very visual. I can picture the trophy. It's bronze. It's got a little inscription that says 'You Tried.' I appreciate the specificity."

Penelope, who had been smirking a moment before, suddenly found her orange juice extremely interesting.

"And Uncle Harold once told me that if incompetence were an Olympic sport, I'd be a gold medalist in every event—even the ones that don't exist yet," Ethan added, nodding toward the older man. "That was good. That one had layers. Was it a compliment? Was it an insult? I still don't know. It's Schrödinger's criticism."

Uncle Harold, who had been laughing along with everyone else, suddenly felt the need to adjust his collar.

Silence fell over the room. Real, sudden silence. The laughter died out as if someone had turned down a master dial. For a fleeting second, something like actual respect flickered across a few faces—before they caught themselves and buried it so deep it might as well have been in a lead-lined box at the bottom of the ocean.

Derby broke the spell with a harsh snort. "Listen to him. Thinks he's a philosopher. He thinks if he smiles while failing, the failure somehow becomes charming. It doesn't. It's still failure. It's just failure with good teeth and a talent for remembering insults. Do you keep a journal, Ethan? Do you write these down?"

She glanced at the faces sitting round the table for moral support. Minus Seline and Grandma Margaret, the rest didn't disappoint.

"'Dear Diary," she continued, "today my mother-in-law compared me to a participation trophy. It was an insightful metaphor about my lack of inherent worth.' Do you have a little notebook? A little leather-bound notebook where you record all the ways we're creatively destroying you?"

"The man has developed a coping mechanism," Landon observed, recovering his composure. "He's turning our insults into compliments. It's like watching someone catch bullets with their teeth. Annoying, but you have to respect the technique."

"Respect?" Derby's eyebrow shot up again, this time achieving new heights of dangerous elevation. "There's nothing to respect. He's not resilient—he's defective. A normal person would have broken by now. A normal person would have either gotten a job, gotten a divorce, or gotten some therapy. Ethan has done none of those things. He's just... standing there. Smiling. Like a man who's finally accepted that his life is a cautionary tale."

Selin looked up at Ethan, her eyes swimming with shame. They were the eyes of a woman who'd been told by her mother for thirty years that she could do better, and here she was, doing... this. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Ethan looked back at her, his expression soft, entirely free of resentment. "For what?"

She had no answer. She didn't even know which apology to choose anymore—for her mother's cruel tongue, for her own cowardice, or for the three long years he had endured both. Maybe all of them. Maybe none of them. Maybe she just needed to apologize for the entire concept of breakfast.

Derby pushed her empty coffee cup across the linen. The porcelain dragged with a sharp screeech that sounded like a cat being slowly deflated. "The coffee is cold."

"It was hot two minutes ago," Ethan noted gently.

"It isn't now," she insisted, as if this were a profound philosophical point. "Time has passed. Temperature has changed. This is how thermodynamics works, Ethan. Did you skip that class too? Along with geometry, employment, and basic human dignity?"

"I'll warm it," Ethan offered, reaching for the cup with the patience of a saint who'd been canonized specifically for dealing with difficult in-laws.