“I’m going to keep trying.”
I stood in her doorway longer than I meant to, watching my daughter breathe.
Something in my chest tightened, quiet and formless, like a knot I couldn’t name. I didn’t know it yet, but the wedding invitations were already in the mail.
***
The uneasy feeling I couldn’t name that first night grew quieter over the following weeks, but it never fully left. I tucked it away because Hazel was radiant, and I didn’t want to be the mother who ruined a good thing.
I stood in her doorway.
***
Then Patrick and Vanessa arrived on a Tuesday evening with the date.
“We’re setting it for June,” he said. “And Vanessa wants to ask Hazel something.”
I braced myself for the worst.
“Hazel, sweetheart,” Vanessa said, looking at my daughter and smiling more softly than I’d ever heard her, “I want you to be my flower girl. Would you do that for me?”
