We’d gone to a little restaurant near the river.
I wore a sleeveless green dress.
After dinner, I cried because my mother would never see me get married.
Jake kissed my shoulder, right beside her face.
“Your mom would be so proud of you,” he said.
I’d carried those words for three years.
Whenever his mother made me feel unwanted, I remembered them.
Now I looked only at him.
“That night, when you said my mother would be proud, had you already promised yours I’d become someone else?”
He nodded once.
Tiny.
Almost invisible.
I felt something inside me give way.
Not anger.
Something worse.
The collapse of a memory I had used to comfort myself for years.
Jake turned toward his mother.
“You need to leave.”
She looked astonished.
“After everything I’ve done for you?”
“You don’t get to speak to Stella like this anymore.”
She started protesting.
He repeated himself.
