“You and Clara were never meant to be enemies. But somewhere along the way, I watched you both start competing for love that was already yours.”
My throat tightened.
I had spent years telling myself Paige was selfish. I had made a whole story out of it because anger was easier than sadness.
But Mom’s words were cutting through every version of the story I had built.
Paige wiped her face with the back of her hand, careful not to smear her makeup, still trying to hold herself together.
Then she read the next line.
“If you wore white to your sister’s wedding, I know what people will think. They will think you wanted to steal her day. Maybe part of you did. But I think another part of you wanted someone to stop you. Someone to see how lost you have been.”
Paige broke.
Not beautifully.
Not like women cry in movies, with one perfect tear sliding down a flawless cheek.
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.
