No respite

Determined not to embarrass myself by losing my composure, I turn away from him and walk back to my table, my legs unsteady and my eyes swollen from unshed tears.

I notice that Denise is now seated with two other men and a woman, who are all dressed in formal wear. They must be the other clients that he had talked about.

Okay, so maybe he was telling the truth about the business meeting, but I still have a strong hunch that he and Denise have something going on.

I can see it in the way they can't stop looking at or smiling at each other and in their general body language too.I decide to stop torturing myself and ignore them for the rest of the evening.

There is no rest for me, however, because as soon as I sit down, Amanda and her mother start what they do best … which is antagonizing me in a bid to provoke and get a reaction out of me.

“Barren, ugly bitch! I don’t know what my brother ever saw in you.” Amanda taunts me after several minutes have passed since I returned to the table.

The words burn into my soul like a red-hot knife and cause unbidden tears to spring to my eyes. I do not let the tears fall though, but blink them back desperately.

This accusation is very unfair, considering the fact that it is her brother’s fault that I do not have a child yet, but my private life is none of her business, so I don’t bother to tell her this.

“Yeah. One would have thought that she would have made herself useful by now and at least produced an heir to my son’s fortune, but all she does is sit in the house day in, day out, eating everything in sight, spending my son’s money at will, while having nothing to show for it.” My mother-in-law adds her input.

“So when are you going to release Derek from the shackles in which you have bound him and let him find someone else who would give my mother the grandchildren she so desperately wants, since it’s obvious that you’ve failed very woefully at that task, just as you’ve failed at everything in life?” Amanda asks me.

I try not to let her hateful words get to me, but today has been a horrible day for me, and I’m finding it difficult to ignore her barbs as I usually would. My mouth opens of it's own accord and I hear myself speak.

“Maybe you should try to grant your mother’s desperate wish for children by giving them to her yourself. You’re older than I am, after all, but you can’t even snag yourself a man, not to talk of keeping him long enough to get married to him and have kids with him.” I retort angrily.

Both of them gasp out loud my words, which is no surprise because never in the three years since I married into the family, have I once dared to talk back to either of them, or even to my aloof husband for that matter.

“I … I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me … I shouldn’t have …” I begin to apologize, but before I can finish stammering out my apologies, Amanda gets up with the quickness of a striking snake, extends her hand and delivers a resounding slap to my face.

My cheek stings as though it has been scalded, and I’m sure that if I looked into a mirror at that moment, I would see the imprint of Amanda’s palm on it because of how hard the slap had been.

To say that I’m humiliated is an understatement. A deathly silence has descended on the restaurant, and I can feel everyone’s eyes on us.

I’m too embarrassed to look over at Derek’s table to see if he saw what just happened and if he will come to my defense. Who am I kidding though?

Derek prefers not to meddle in affairs relating to his family and me, so he definitely won't be getting involved in this either. I'm sure of that fact.

Amanda and her mother are having a low argument, with her mother telling her that she should have waited until we got home to teach me a lesson instead of causing a scene in public.

Several seconds pass, and I keep my gaze on my hands, which are intertwined in my laps so I won't meet anybody’s gaze.

Slowly, people resume their conversations and continue eating their food. Nobody comes to our table to find out what's wrong, not even the restaurant’s staff.

Unable to stand the humiliation any longer, I get up abruptly and head blindly for the restroom, a sob tearing it's way out of me, but there, I am met with what is the final straw for me that night … or so I think at that moment.

I have no way of knowing that the horrible events of the night are far from over yet, but I find this out a few moments later when I get to the restroom.

There in the empty restroom, I stumble on my husband, whom I didn’t even realize had left his table, passionately kissing his ex, the same woman he called a business associate.