She made a sound like something inside her had finally cracked.
The letter slipped from her hand and floated to the floor.
For a second, nobody moved.
Then I stepped down from the altar.
My dress whispered around my legs.
It was not white.
That was the second surprise.
Everyone had expected me in a traditional bridal gown. Paige had expected it most of all. She thought standing beside me in white would create a comparison.
But I had chosen pale blue.
Mom’s favorite color.
The same soft blue as the scarf on the empty chair. The same blue as the dress she wore in every photograph where she looked truly happy. The same blue as the kitchen curtains she sewed when we were kids, back when our house still smelled like cinnamon rolls and Sunday mornings instead of hospital disinfectant and unsaid things.
Paige looked up as I approached.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
I stopped in front of her.
Her eyes were red now. Her lips trembled.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
“You didn’t know what?”
“That Mom…” She looked at the letter on the floor. “That she saw me like that.”
I bent down, picked up the letter, and handed it back to her.
“She saw all of us.”
Paige shook her head. “No. She saw you. She always saw you.”
There it was.
The sentence under every fight we had ever had.
The truth wearing no makeup.
I heard someone behind us sniffle. My aunt, probably. She had always loved tears when they were not hers.
I ignored everyone.
For the first time that day, my wedding guests disappeared.
There was only me and my sister.
Two women standing in front of an altar, carrying the same childhood in two different bodies.
“Paige,” I said softly, “Mom worried about you every day.”
She laughed, but it broke halfway through.
“That’s not the same as being proud of me.”
“She was proud of you.”
“No, she was proud of you.” Paige’s voice sharpened, but the anger had no strength left. “Clara the responsible one. Clara the kind one. Clara who got good grades and sent money home and remembered birthdays and never needed anything. And I was just Paige. Too loud. Too emotional. Too much.”
I could have corrected her.
I could have listed every time she had hurt me.
My college graduation, when she announced her fake pregnancy just to pull the family away from me.
