My mother-in-law brought thirty-eight friends into my restaurant, ordered the most expensive menu on it, and told them she was paying. Then she started boasting about my husband’s new girlfriend — and I looked across the room at the young woman refilling their water.

My husband Tobias has never put one dollar into it.

His mother tells it differently.

My son set her up. Juliet just cooks.

For three years she has come in without a booking and eaten the steak and the shellfish and the good wine and left without paying, and every time I raised it Tobias said the same thing.

“She’s my mother. She brings people in. Don’t make a thing about a few thousand.”

I stayed quiet for too long. That was mine.

That Friday she decided to find out how far it went.

“The full tasting menu for everybody,” she said. “And open the reserve bottles from the cellar. Nothing cheap today.”

Her friends clapped.

The bill was going to be over twenty thousand dollars and every person in that room knew it except the one who had ordered it.

Declan tried once more. “We can still stop this.”