Paige disappeared after dinner.
For a moment, I thought she had left.
Then I found her outside behind the venue, sitting on the stone steps under a string of lights. The blue scarf was still around her shoulders. Her bouquet rested beside her.
She looked up when she heard me.
“I was going to leave,” she admitted.
“I figured.”
“But then I thought that would make everything about me again.”
I sat beside her, careful with my dress.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Inside, music played. Laughter rose and fell. Someone announced that dessert was being served.
Outside, the air smelled like summer grass and rain that had not arrived yet.
Paige rubbed her thumb over the edge of Mom’s scarf.
“I really did hate you sometimes,” she said.
“I know.”
She flinched at my honesty.
I looked at the dark garden ahead of us.
“I hated you too.”
She turned to me.
I had never said it before.
I had softened it for years. I had called it frustration, disappointment, exhaustion. But hatred had been there, sitting in the corner of my heart like an unwanted guest.
Paige’s eyes filled again.
“I deserved that.”
“Sometimes,” I said. “But I don’t want to live there anymore.”
She nodded slowly.
“I don’t know how to be different.”
“Me neither.”
That surprised her.
I smiled faintly. “You think I know how to forgive you because I did one dramatic thing in a church? Paige, I’m still angry.”
Her lips parted.
“I’m angry you made me dread my own wedding. I’m angry you left me alone with Mom when she was sick. I’m angry you turned every milestone into a competition. I’m angry that even today, some part of me was waiting for you to hurt me.”
