She sat me by the kitchen. That’s where I watched my son get married—through a swinging door, behind a tray of shrimp cocktail. I paid for the wedding.
Every flower, every chair. But when the music started and the toasts began, I wasn’t part of it. Not even close.
I smiled, stayed quiet, and after the last bite of cake, I burned it all to the ground with one phone call. There was no sign. No card.
No name plate. No warm greeting. Just a folding chair with a paper napkin tossed over the seat.
That was my place—between a stack of used trays and a wheeled cart with a broken wheel that squeaked every time someone pushed it past me. I stood there for a few seconds, blinking hard, trying to process what I was seeing. The scent of marinara hung in the air—thick and sour—clinging to the steam that rolled off the kitchen doors in waves.
I felt the heat from the industrial ovens against my back, and something inside me twisted, turned cold and hard. I looked down at my dress—soft mauve chiffon, hand-stitched by a seamstress I’d found through a recommendation from my coworker. I had spent three hours that morning getting my hair done at the salon, sitting under the dryer while the stylist curled and pinned and sprayed until every strand sat perfectly.
Three hours pretending this day would be as special for me as it was for them. But no one had told me. No one said, We’ve made other seating arrangements, Margaret.
No one even looked at me when I arrived at the venue—not even Daniel, my son, the groom whose entire life I had built with my own two hands. He was too busy smiling wide for the photographer, adjusting his cuff links with nervous fingers, letting her mother kiss him on the cheek like she’d raised him from infancy. Like she was the one who stayed up every night when he had night terrors after his father left.
Like she was the one who took double shifts at the hospital when he needed braces and I couldn’t afford both rent and his orthodontist bills. I clutched my little handbag—beige leather, the one Daniel bought me years ago for Mother’s Day when he still called me mama instead of Margaret. My hands were shaking.
I could feel it in my wrists, a subtle vibration like something electrical trying to escape through my fingertips, like my body was trying to tell me what my mind refused to accept. The catering manager—a kid who couldn’t have been more than twenty, with a patchy beard and nervous energy—smiled awkwardly when he noticed me standing there frozen. “Uh… they said you were supposed to wait back here, ma’am.”
I stared at him, my mouth dry, my throat tight.
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