And I drove. Not fast. Not reckless.
Just steady, the way you do when you’ve carried something heavy for so long that setting it down feels unfamiliar. The pine trees blurred into a dark watercolor outside my window. Vermont roads curve like they’re thinking of something sad.
My phone buzzed once, then twice, then a rapid-fire series of vibrations as if someone were panicking on the other end. I didn’t look. The lake disappeared behind me, but the scream kept echoing in my ribcage like a memory that wasn’t done yet.
Five miles out, I pulled into a turnout overlooking a valley sprinkled with farmhouse lights. The wedding venue was a distant glow through the trees, flickering like a candle fighting for air. I let the engine idle.
Then my phone lit up again—
Mom. Dad. Noah’s mother, Victoria.
A bridesmaid whose number I didn’t even save. Finally—
Laya. I watched her name blink.
Watched it fade. Watched it blink again. I didn’t answer.
Not yet. Snowflakes drifted onto the windshield, melting the moment they touched. I rested my forehead against the steering wheel and breathed in the smell of cold fabric and cedar—my car, my space, my rules.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t the supporting character in someone else’s movie. I clicked the radio on low. Static.
Then the faint sound of a piano. Soft, steady, like a pulse. The phone buzzed one more time.
A text preview flashed:
“How could you? – Laya”
I exhaled. Not angry.
Not triumphant. Just tired in a way that felt honest. But then another message came—longer, trembling around the edges:
“Please.
Don’t go far. I need to talk to you. Everyone knows now.
Please.”
Everyone knows. I pictured the little silver box split open on the gift table. The screenshots arranged in a neat, devastating stack.
Noah’s face draining of color. The photographer lowering his camera. Mom finally seeing the daughter she pushed into the shadows.
And Laya—
the golden child,
the center of every family photo,
the sun no one was allowed to eclipse—
standing under a chandelier that made her look suddenly small. I didn’t hate her. I never had.
You don’t hate someone for being loved more. You just wonder what it would’ve felt like to be loved enough. The windshield fogged as I thought.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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