Chapter 3
For three days, I heard nothing from my parents.
Then something unexpected happened.
My sister came to my apartment.
Alone.
I opened the door and found her standing there holding her invitation.
She didn’t look angry.
She looked tired.
“Can I come in?”
I stepped aside.
My fiancé was out meeting with our photographer, so it was just the two of us.
She sat at the kitchen table.
For almost a minute, neither of us spoke.
Then she slid the invitation toward me.
“Mom told me you offered me the venue.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“She said you and your fiancé were reconsidering the size of your wedding and that you might do something smaller.”
I felt something twist inside my chest.
“That never happened.”
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“Because I reread our messages.”
She took out her phone.
Then she showed me.
Three weeks earlier, she had sent me a message.
Mom says you guys might be making some wedding changes. Hope everything is okay.
I remembered it.
At the time, I thought she meant some minor scheduling change my mother had mentioned.
I had answered:
Everything’s fine. Just dealing with wedding chaos.
That was it.
My sister had apparently taken my response as confirmation that I was changing plans.
I had taken her message as meaningless wedding small talk.
And between us stood our mother.
“I thought you knew,” my sister said.
“I thought you knew they took it from me.”
She looked away.
“I knew they were moving the reservation.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“I thought you had agreed.”
“Did you ever ask me?”
She didn’t answer.
That was important too.
Mom had manipulated the story.
But my sister had accepted something valuable that belonged to my plans without checking once.
Two things could be true.
She had been lied to.
And she had been comfortable benefiting from that lie.
“I should have called,” she finally said.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
It was the first apology I had received.
No justification.
No speech about family.
No demand that I understand.
Just two words.
I didn’t suddenly forget twenty years of resentment.
But I appreciated them.
She looked toward the invitation again.
“How did you get Aster House?”
I told her.
Her eyes widened.
“They just offered it?”
“Pretty much.”
She laughed softly.
“Mom is losing her mind.”
“I noticed.”
“She thinks everyone is going to compare our weddings.”
“That isn’t my problem.”
“I know.”
Then she looked at me.
“But we really are getting married on the same day.”
“Yes.”
“What do we do?”
That question mattered because she said we.
Not you.
Not what are you going to do about this?
We.
“We have our weddings,” I said.
Her eyes filled slightly.
“That means I won’t be at yours.”
“And I won’t be at yours.”
“We always talked about being at each other’s weddings.”
“I know.”
That hurt more than the venue.
Much more.
For the first time since everything happened, I felt the real cost.
We had spent years being compared.
Who got better grades.
Who was prettier.
Who had more friends.
Who earned more.
Who needed more help.
Who deserved more attention.
And now our parents had managed to turn two weddings into another competition.
My sister wiped beneath one eye.
“I can’t change mine now.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Mom keeps saying you should change yours.”
“I’m not.”
She nodded.
“I figured.”
Before leaving, she stopped at the door.
“For what it’s worth, I told Mom to stop calling you.”
“Thank you.”
“And I told her this isn’t your fault.”
That surprised me.
Apparently, it surprised Mom too.
Because the next morning, she tried a different strategy.
She called our wedding coordinator at Aster House.
She claimed there had been “a family scheduling emergency” and asked whether our wedding could be moved to another weekend.
The coordinator called me immediately.
“Your mother does not have authorization to make changes, correct?”
I closed my eyes.
“No.”
“Would you like us to note that only you and your fiancé may discuss event details?”
“Yes.”
“We already did.”
I thanked her.
Then I called Mom.
She answered on the first ring.
“You called Aster House?”
“I was trying to find a solution.”
“To a problem you created.”
“I was asking a question.”
“You tried to move my wedding.”
“They said they have other dates.”
“They absolutely did not say that.”
Silence.
I knew Aster House’s calendar.
There were no “other dates.”
Because we weren’t customers.
We were guests.
Mom had lied without even having enough information to make the lie convincing.
“You are going too far,” I said.
“You are destroying this family over one Saturday.”
“No, Mom. I’m getting married on the Saturday I’ve been planning for more than a year.”
“Your sister needs us there.”
I waited.
Just long enough for her to hear what she had said.
Then I asked quietly, “And I don’t?”
She didn’t answer.
May you like
That silence hurt worse than any answer could have.
I ended the call.
