“I have it.”
“Read it.”
He opened the message.
Megan had written:
You’re officially forgiven for missing my wedding if you promise never to scare me like this again. I love you. Rest. Daniel stays with you. That’s an order.
I smiled.
“She sounds married.”
“She called after the ceremony too.”
“How was your mom?”
Daniel’s expression darkened.
“She left me six voicemails.”
“Oh.”
“I deleted four.”
That surprised me.
Daniel never deleted Linda’s messages.
Even angry ones.
Especially angry ones.
He kept them like obligations.
“Why?”
“Because I’m done being spoken to that way.”
I was too tired to understand the weight of that sentence.
A nurse checked my blood pressure.
Another adjusted my IV.
The surgeon stopped by and explained that the infection had been worse than expected but that they had cleaned everything thoroughly.
“You got here at the right time,” he said.
“What if I hadn’t?”
He hesitated.
“Let’s be grateful you did.”
Daniel understood the answer even if I did not.
His hand found mine beneath the blanket.
At 7:08 p.m., the door opened.
No knock.
Linda walked in.
She was still wearing her mother-of-the-bride gown.
Silver satin.
Beaded shoulders.
Pearls.
Her hair, usually flawless, had begun to collapse around her face.
Her makeup had smudged near one eye.
For one second, I thought she had come to apologize.
That was the foolishness hope gives us.
It convinces us people might become someone different simply because we desperately need them to.
Linda looked at me.
Then at Daniel.
And said, “You ruined everything.”
Daniel stood immediately.
“Mom.”
“You embarrassed this family.”
“Leave.”
“I had to explain to everyone why my son abandoned his sister.”
“Megan told me to stay.”
“Megan was being emotional.”
“She was being decent.”
Linda’s face hardened.
I had seen that expression before.
At holidays.
Birthdays.
Dinner tables.
It was the look she gave whenever Daniel failed to play the role she had assigned him.
“Your sister walked down that aisle without you.”
“She walked down the aisle with Uncle Robert, just like she planned after Dad died.”
“You were supposed to be there.”
“My wife was in surgery.”
Linda pointed at me.
“She is always something.”
The words landed harder than I expected.
Always something.
I remembered my miscarriage three years earlier, when Linda complained that we had canceled Christmas dinner.
I remembered the year I was laid off, when she joked that Daniel finally had “a housewife.”
I remembered the dinner when she asked whether my inability to get pregnant again was “psychological.”
Always something.
Daniel stepped toward her.
“You need to go.”
Linda ignored him.
She walked around him toward the bed.
I tried to push myself upright.
Pain tore through my abdomen.
“Linda,” I whispered.
She looked down at me.
Her face was flushed.
“You have no idea what today meant to Megan.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I didn’t choose this.”