On her wedding day, Christina uncovers a devastating secret about the woman she’s supposed to call family. In a church full of whispers and white lies, she’s forced to choose between silence and truth… with everything on the line.
This is a story about control, courage, and what it really means to stand tall.
My name is Christina and the day I was supposed to get married, was the day I realized what faith really meant.
Not in God. But in myself.
Most people in our town call her Mother Eloise. She’s a devout woman, a generous donor, a graceful voice in the choir, and of course, a revered church elder.
To everyone else, she was a saint.
To me, she was my fiancé’s mother, and someone who had always treated me with a chilling kind of politeness that never quite reached her eyes.
She hugged with her arms, never with her heart.
I know that sounds strange but it was something my grandmother always told me.
“You’ll know how good a person is by their hugs, Christina. A good person hugs with their entire heart.”
When Marcus proposed to me at family dinner in his mother’s garden, she smiled. She clapped and I think she even cried a little.
“I want nothing but joy for my son,” she told me afterward.
“And for you, my dear.”
Look, against my better judgment, I believed her.
And that was my first mistake.
Planning the wedding was mostly smooth. Marcus and I agreed on everything from the start. We were on the same page for the colors, the food, even our wedding playlist, minus one song that he simply had to play for his groomsmen.
But when it came to the church, he hesitated.
“I just don’t want to owe her,” he said once while we were testing cake samples.
“Your mom offered, honey,” I said.
“Let’s just take it. It’ll be the one thing she gets a say in. I already told her that petunias weren’t going to make the cut for the wedding.”
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
