One boy squinted at my ears on the playground and yelled:
“Why do you have grandma ears? Can you even hear me? HEY, GRANDMA!”
Everyone laughed.
I pretended I didn’t care until I got home, then locked myself in my room and cried until my chest hurt. I told my mom I’d rather not hear at all than be “the weird kid with the machines in her ears.”
Bethany was thirteen then—a tall, scrappy middle schooler with skinned knees, a soccer bag permanently slung over one shoulder, and a reputation for not taking crap from anyone. She didn’t knock.
She just walked into my room, sat cross‑legged on the carpet, and waited until I looked at her. “Those kids are idiots,” she said like she was reading a fact off a worksheet. “Those aren’t ‘grandma ears.’ Those are upgrades.
You’re basically a cyborg. You get little computers in your head. They get earwax.
Who’s winning?”
I laughed through my tears. Then she dug in her backpack and pulled out two tiny bottles of nail polish—sparkly blue and plain white. “Give me your hearing aids,” she said.
I hesitated. She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to break them.
I’m going to make them cool.”
She painted little flowers on the cases with a level of concentration I’d only ever seen her use on math homework. When she finished, she held them up like they were jewelry. “Now they’re custom,” she said.
“If anyone says anything, tell them they’re limited edition. And if someone still gives you crap…”
She stood, stretching to her full height. “Tell them to come talk to me.”
She meant it.
For the next two years, until she left for high school, she walked me to school most mornings. Word got around fast: if you messed with the girl with hearing aids, you answered to Bethany—the tall one who played soccer, who’d absolutely shove you off the monkey bars if you deserved it. Kids still stared.
But they stared less. And I cried less. Life in Ohio is not glamorous for most people, and it wasn’t for us.
When I was fourteen, my dad got laid off from the auto‑parts plant where he’d worked for more than a decade. One day there was a paycheck; the next day there was a cardboard box and a security escort. Overnight, our lives shrank.
My parents started whisper‑fighting over stacks of bills at the kitchen table after they thought I’d gone to bed. Name‑brand cereal on the counter turned into store‑brand in plain boxes. There was a real possibility we’d lose the small two‑story house at the end of the cul‑de‑sac.
Bethany’s family stepped in like it was the most natural thing in the world. Her mom started dropping off groceries—paper bags full of Kroger sale items and bulk buys from Costco. Her dad helped my dad get a job at his company’s warehouse on the outskirts of the city, working long shifts in a concrete building near the interstate.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it kept the lights on. A couple of years later, when Bethany was nineteen and commuting to a state college an hour away, she hit a patch of black ice on I‑71 one dark winter afternoon. Her car slid, spun, and slammed into a guardrail.
The call came from my aunt, voice shaking: Bethany was in the hospital in downtown Columbus. She spent three weeks there. After school, I’d take the city bus, ride the elevator, and curl up in the vinyl chair beside her bed, finishing my homework under fluorescent lights.
When she was conscious and lucid again, I brought her class notes and helped her catch up on assignments. We joked about her being able to do statistics on pain meds better than I could fully awake. Those years—my hearing aids, my dad’s layoff, Bethany’s accident—cemented us.
We knew, without saying it out loud, that we were each other’s person. Then Bethany met Simone. Simone (28F) came with yoga mats and cold brew and a very curated Instagram feed.
Bethany met her at a yoga studio in the trendy part of Columbus—the kind of place with exposed brick, hanging plants, and a kombucha tap near the front desk. Simone worked the front desk, checking people in with a perfect manicure and a polished smile. Her leggings and sports bras always matched.
Her hair was always sleek. She came from a wealthy family in a gated community outside Cincinnati, the type with stone entryways and names like “Fox Run” and “Whispering Oaks.”
The first time Bethany brought her to Sunday dinner at Grandma’s house, Simone arrived with a bottle of organic wine and a fancy dessert box from a pastry shop in the Short North. She complimented everything—Grandma’s table runner, my mom’s casserole, my earrings.
She was polite. Warm, even. She also had… tastes.
She only ate organic, mostly from Whole Foods or the local co‑op. She only bought certain clothing brands you see in the nice part of the mall. She used skincare products that lived in frosted glass bottles and cost more than my entire drugstore routine.
Little by little, Bethany’s habits shifted to match hers. Burgers on game day turned into veggie bowls. Drugstore cleanser turned into a ten‑step routine.
Target sneakers got replaced with sleek white shoes from brands I’d only seen in ads. I noticed. But Bethany seemed happy.
People change when they’re in love, right? That’s what I told myself. About two years ago, Simone proposed.
There was a trip, a fancy dinner, a ring. Bethany showed up at my apartment afterward with mascara smudged from crying and a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking. “Come get coffee with me,” she said.
We sat in a small downtown café full of Ohio State students and people working on laptops. She slid a small gift bag across the table. Inside was a white mug with gold lettering that read, “Will you be my maid of honor?”
I started crying before I could even say yes.
“Of course,” I said. “Obviously. There’s no world where I’m not.”
From that moment, the wedding became our project.
We toured venues on chilly Saturdays: rustic barns, hotel ballrooms, country clubs. Bethany fell in love with a garden estate about an hour outside the city. It had a white house with black shutters, a pond with ducks, and sprawling lawns hung with string lights.
It looked like every soft, dreamy Pinterest board. Simone’s parents were paying for most of it. The total budget hovered near $50,000, more than my parents had ever talked about as a single number.
I went dress shopping with Bethany, sitting on velvet sofas while she stepped out of fitting rooms in lace and satin. We FaceTimed her mom from the boutique when she whispered, “I think this is the one,” and all of us cried when she stepped onto the pedestal. I organized her bachelorette trip—three days in Nashville with line dancing, matching shirts, and way too many fries.
I collected money from bridesmaids, made spreadsheets, kept timelines, and lived inside our group chat. Being her maid of honor wasn’t just an honor. It felt like the natural continuation of everything we’d already been to each other.
Six weeks before the wedding, everything was mostly done. Deposits paid, vendors booked, dress fittings scheduled. That’s when the cracks started to show.
About three weeks out, I went to Bethany and Simone’s apartment to finalize rehearsal dinner details. They lived in a new building near downtown Columbus—stainless‑steel appliances, gray laminate floors, and a balcony overlooking a busy street. Bethany was stuck late at her marketing job.
So it was just me and Simone at the kitchen table, laptops open, a can of LaCroix sweating onto a coaster. We were dragging little digital rectangles around a seating chart, debating whether Simone’s college friends would vibe better with her yoga friends or her work friends, when she suddenly said, very casually:
“We need to talk about your hearing aids.”
My fingers froze on the trackpad. “What about them?” I asked.
She folded her hands like she was about to give constructive feedback in a meeting. “I’ve been thinking about the photos,” she said. “The aesthetic.
This is a garden wedding—very classic, very clean. And your hearing aids…” She paused. “They’re kind of visible.
A little distracting. I’m worried they’ll pull focus.”
I stared at her. Even with technology boosting my hearing, I thought I must have misheard.
“You’re worried my hearing aids will pull focus?” I repeated. She nodded, as if we were discussing the wrong shade of napkins. “I was wondering if you could take them out for the ceremony,” she said, “or at least for photos.
Just for the day. Everyone’s supposed to be looking at us. I don’t want anything that clashes with what we’ve planned.”
It took a second to find my voice.
“I can’t just take them out,” I said. “If I don’t wear them, I can’t hear. Like, at all.
It’s an outdoor ceremony. There’ll be music, vows, people talking. I’ll miss everything.”
She let out a small, annoyed breath.
“You’re being a bit dramatic,” she said. “Plenty of people with hearing issues go without their aids for special occasions. You could read lips.
Or just stand closer to people when they talk. It’s one day.”
My heart thudded in my chest and in my ears. “I’m not good at lip‑reading,” I said carefully.
“We tried it when I was a kid. It doesn’t work for me. My loss isn’t mild.
Without these, it’s not like I miss a word here or there. I’m lost.”
She shifted in her chair, irritation sharpening her features. “This is my wedding,” she said.
“I’ve spent a year planning every detail. The flowers, the linens, the photography. We hired a fine‑art photographer.
Your hearing aids are flesh‑colored, sure, but they’re still noticeable. They don’t fit the aesthetic I’m going for.”
She pulled out her phone and opened Pinterest. “Look,” she said, swiveling the screen toward me.
“See? Everything cohesive. Bridesmaids all soft and neutral, nothing that pulls the eye.
We want that same look. And then…” She flicked her gaze toward my ears. “So the problem,” I said slowly, “is that I’ll look like myself?”
Her jaw tensed.
“You’re twisting my words,” she said. “All I’m asking is that you make a small sacrifice for one day so our photos are perfect. Bethany wore contacts for the engagement shoot because glasses don’t photograph well.
She made that compromise for me. Don’t you think you can do the same?”
I took a breath that felt like glass in my lungs. “Glasses and hearing aids are not the same thing,” I said.
“She can still see without her glasses. I cannot hear without these. That’s not a cosmetic choice.
That’s access.”
Her eyes flashed. “You’re making excuses,” she said. “If you really cared about Bethany, you’d do this one thing.
It’s one day. It’s not about you.”
Something inside me clicked into place. Not loudly.
More like a quiet lock turning. “If you have a problem with the way I look,” I said, voice calm in that way it gets when I’m past crying, “you should ask someone else to be your maid of honor.”
The room went still. Outside, a siren wailed somewhere in the distance.
“I don’t want to replace you,” she said finally. “I’m just asking you to be reasonable.”
“I am being reasonable,” I said. “I’m not taking out my hearing aids.”
I closed my laptop, grabbed my bag, and left.
I cried the entire drive home on the interstate, headlights smearing into streaks of white through my tears. I told myself I’d talk to Bethany, that it was a misunderstanding, that Simone would realize how awful she’d sounded and apologize. That night, Simone started texting.
First came a link to “invisible” hearing aids. “These would be perfect for the wedding,” she wrote. “If you order now, they might arrive in time.
You’d love them long‑term too.”
Then a link to completely‑in‑canal devices. “These barely show. My parents might help with cost.
Think of it as an upgrade.”
I stared at my phone, feeling the pressure coil tighter in my chest. I didn’t respond. The next day, a different message popped up.
“Talked to Bethany,” she wrote. “She agrees we need a cohesive look. She just doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.
I’m stuck in the middle here.”
Something about that made my stomach drop. I knew Bethany. I knew the girl who painted flowers on my hearing aids and threatened kids who teased me.
The idea that she suddenly agreed my hearing aids were a problem didn’t fit. I called Bethany. She didn’t answer.
I texted asking if we could talk. A few hours later, she replied:
“Crazy week at work. Can we meet this weekend?”
We met at a crowded coffee shop near Ohio State’s campus.
It smelled like espresso and burnt sugar. Students hunched over laptops at every table. Bethany looked exhausted—dark circles under her eyes, hair in a messy bun, sweatshirt from her college half‑zipped.
After we got drinks, I didn’t bother easing into it. “Do you have a problem with me wearing my hearing aids at the wedding?” I asked. She blinked like I’d just started speaking another language.
“What? No. Why would I?”
I told her everything.
The conversation at the apartment. The words “aesthetic” and “pull focus.” The links. The message saying Bethany agreed with her.
Then I slid my phone across the table and let her read the texts herself. Bethany’s face changed in slow motion—confusion, then anger, then something like hurt. “I never said that,” she said quietly.
“She mentioned your hearing aids once. I told her it was a non‑issue. That you’ve had them forever.
That they’re part of you. That was it.”
She stared at my phone. “I cannot believe she used my name like that,” she muttered.
She looked up, eyes hard. “I’m going to talk to her,” she said. “Tonight.”
I went home feeling lighter.
Bethany had my back. She always had. I told myself this was just wedding stress making Simone weird.
I was wrong. Around midnight, my phone lit up with Bethany’s name. “She lost it,” Bethany said by way of greeting.
Her voice was raw. “I showed her the texts. I told her I’d never said you couldn’t wear your hearing aids.
At first she denied everything. Then she said I was choosing you over her. She said this wedding is supposed to be about us, not about accommodating your disability.”
My stomach flipped.
“She’s never talked like that before,” Bethany whispered. “I don’t even recognize her.”
“You don’t have to defend me,” I said. “I don’t want you stuck in the middle.
Maybe she’s just overwhelmed. Weddings make people… weird.”
“I need a few days,” Bethany said. “To think.”
Those “few days” turned into a week.
Bethany stopped answering my calls. My texts got short, delayed responses if she answered at all. When I asked my aunt if she’d talked to her, she said Bethany seemed stressed but busy—still pushing ahead with cake tastings and meetings with the DJ.
What I didn’t know then was what Simone was feeding her in the background. A week later, Bethany texted and asked if we could meet at our grandmother’s house. Grandma’s place is small and white with faded shutters and a flag out front, three streets over from where she raised all of us.
It’s where we hunted Easter eggs as kids and where every major family blow‑up and make‑up seems to happen. When I pulled up, Bethany was sitting on the porch steps, elbows on her knees, staring at the crack in the driveway Grandma always complains about but never fixes. She stood when she saw me, arms crossing over her chest.
“Why are you trying to ruin my wedding?” she blurted. It felt like someone had dropped a stone in my stomach. “What?” I managed.
“Simone told me you’ve been calling her nonstop,” Bethany said, her voice tight. “Screaming about your hearing aids. Threatening to drop out as maid of honor unless she apologizes.
She says you’re giving her panic attacks. She says you’re trying to make this all about you.”
I just stared at her. “I haven’t called her once,” I said slowly.
“Not one time. You can check.”
I pulled out my phone, opened my call log, and handed it over. The last call to Simone was from weeks earlier when we were coordinating bridesmaid shoes.
Bethany scrolled, frown deepening. “There’s nothing here,” she said. “Because it didn’t happen,” I said.
She sat back down on the steps like her knees had given out. She put her head in her hands for a moment, then dragged her fingers through her hair. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.
So I sat beside her and told her everything again. The conversation at the apartment, word for word. The texts.
The links. The message where Simone claimed Bethany agreed with her. I showed her screenshots of the full thread.
Bethany’s hands shook as she held my phone. “She’s been telling me things about you for weeks,” Bethany said. “She said you missed the final dress fitting on purpose because you ‘didn’t care.’ She said you’d been talking trash about her to the other bridesmaids.
I believed her. I never checked. I just… believed her.”
“Did you ask the others?” I asked gently.
She shook her head. “I’ve barely had time to breathe,” she said. “I’m planning a whole wedding.
She’s the person I’m supposed to trust the most. I didn’t even think to question it.”
I opened the bridesmaid group chat and handed her the phone again. “Look,” I said.
The chat was full of logistics: hotel links, dress photos, timelines. There were no rants about Simone, no drama beyond “does this color look weird on me?”
“And the ‘final fitting’?” I said. “There’s nothing about it in here.”
Then I opened another chat.
“This is the one you weren’t in,” I said. Simone had made a separate group chat with the other bridesmaids for the final dress fitting—one that conveniently did not include me. Bethany clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes welling up.
“I feel so stupid,” she said. “I just took her word for everything.”
She swallowed, like what she had to say next physically hurt. “Two weeks ago,” she said, “she told me we should spend less time together after the wedding.
She said you’re too dependent on me. That our relationship is unhealthy. That cousins shouldn’t be as close as we are.
She said I needed boundaries, that you’d always come between us if I didn’t pull back.”
She looked at me, eyes shining. “I argued with her,” Bethany said. “I told her you’re not dependent on me, that we basically grew up like sisters.
But she kept bringing it up. I thought she was just… jealous. Or maybe trying too hard to be a ‘priority.’ I didn’t see it as a red flag.
I should have.”
She hesitated. “Do you remember the engagement party?” she asked. “At Simone’s parents’ place?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“With the tent in the backyard and the tiny appetizers nobody could pronounce.”
“Do you remember talking to her brother, Tyler?”
“Sure,” I said. “He asked about my hearing aids. I told him how they work.
We talked for, like, five minutes.”
“She told me you flirted with him all night,” Bethany said flatly. “She said he asked for your number. She said you were trying to hook up with him at my engagement party.”
My jaw actually dropped.
“That’s not even close to true,” I said. “At all.”
Bethany looked at me for a long moment, then nodded once. “I believe you,” she said.
“I think she’s been lying about you for a long time, and I didn’t want to see it.”
We sat there on Grandma’s porch steps as the late‑afternoon light turned golden and the shadows stretched across the little Ohio front yards. Somewhere, a dog barked. Kids rode bikes down the street.
“I need to talk to her,” Bethany said finally. “Really talk to her. I’m supposed to marry this woman in three weeks.
I need to know who she actually is.”
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Whatever you decide,” I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
That night, around midnight, she called from our aunt’s house. “I confronted her,” Bethany said.
“I told her I’d seen the group chats, the texts, everything. At first she denied it all. Then she switched gears.
She said she only lied because she was worried about how much influence you have over me. That you’ve ‘always controlled’ my decisions. That she was trying to protect our relationship.”
Bethany laughed once, a broken sound.
“She said she did it out of love,” she said. “Like that made it better.”
“What did you say?” I asked. “I told her I was going to stay at Aunt Lynn’s for a few days,” Bethany said.
“To think. She started crying. Begging.
She said if I walked out, it was your fault. She said you’ve been trying to break us up from the beginning because you’re jealous we have something you don’t.”
She went quiet. “That was the moment I knew I couldn’t marry her,” she said finally.
“I could handle insecurity, maybe. But not this. Not lies on top of lies, and then blaming you when she got caught.”
The next day, Simone went on a full‑court press.
She called my aunt and my mom, crying and frantic, saying Bethany was having “cold feet” and that I had “poisoned her.” She called Bethany’s friends, painting herself as the heartbroken fiancée whose partner had been stolen by a clingy cousin. Some of Simone’s relatives texted Bethany, telling her every couple has issues before the wedding, that she was overreacting, that she couldn’t let “a fight with extended family” ruin everything. Simone’s mother called Bethany directly to remind her how much money they’d spent, how guests had already bought plane tickets, how embarrassing it would be to cancel now.
Bethany turned off her phone. For two days, she stayed at our aunt’s house, barely talking to anyone. I brought takeout from a local diner—burgers, fries, milkshakes—and we watched old movies and game shows, not saying Simone’s name.
On the third day, Bethany turned her phone back on. Over two hundred messages came through. Most were from Simone or Simone’s family.
Some were pleading. Some were furious. Some tried guilt.
Some tried pity. That afternoon, Bethany sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee she wasn’t drinking. She scrolled.
Then she opened a group chat that included all the wedding guests. “Due to personal reasons,” she typed, “the wedding is canceled. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this causes.
Thank you for understanding.”
She hit send. Simone called immediately. Bethany put it on speaker.
“You’re ruining both of our lives,” Simone screamed. “You’re throwing away four years over nothing. She got into your head, didn’t she?
Your little cousin. I will never forgive either of you.”
“The wedding is off, Simone,” Bethany said, voice shaking but firm. “It’s done.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” Simone snapped.
“My family has spent too much money. The wedding is still happening. I’ll walk down that aisle even if you don’t show up.
I am not letting her destroy everything.”
Bethany hung up. In the end, there was no wedding. The venue got canceled, vendors were notified, guests changed their plans.
Some grumbled about nonrefundable tickets. Others quietly sent Bethany messages saying they were proud of her. Simone, however, did not accept that the relationship was over.
She started appearing at places she knew Bethany would be—waiting in the parking lot of Bethany’s gym, lingering in the cereal aisle at the Kroger she shopped at, sitting in her car outside our aunt’s house. Bethany told her, over and over, to leave her alone. When that didn’t work, she blocked Simone’s number and every account she could find.
That’s when Simone turned her attention to me. The texts came first. “You destroyed my life,” she wrote.
“I lost the woman I love because you wouldn’t take your stupid hearing aids out for one day. You made everything about yourself. If you cared at all about Bethany, you’d convince her to call me.”
Every sentence tried to turn my disability into selfishness.
I didn’t respond. Then one afternoon, she showed up at my apartment building—a three‑story brick place near campus with stained carpets and thin walls. She pounded on my door for ten minutes straight.
When I finally cracked it open, she shoved her way into the doorway. “You couldn’t just let me have this, could you?” she snapped. “You had to make her choose.
You have always needed her to pick you.”
“My hearing aids are not about you,” I said, hands shaking. “And Bethany made her own decision.”
“You’re obsessed with her,” Simone said. “It’s weird.
Cousins aren’t supposed to be that close. You don’t want her to have anyone but you.”
My neighbor—a retired guy with an Ohio State cap who always smells like coffee—opened his door down the hall. “Everything okay?” he asked.
Simone spun around. “This is none of your business,” she snapped. He pulled out his phone.
“I’m calling the cops if you don’t leave,” he said calmly. Simone glared at both of us, then finally stalked down the hall. “This isn’t over,” she hissed before the stairwell door slammed behind her.
When my hands stopped shaking, I called Bethany and told her what had happened. She sighed, sounding tired down to her bones. “She’s been texting me from random numbers,” Bethany said.
“Sometimes she says she loves me and wants to fix things. Sometimes she says she’ll tell everyone I’m cruel and heartless. It’s like flipping a switch.”
Two weeks later, more truth started leaking out.
One of the bridesmaids, Lisa, messaged Bethany and asked if they could talk. They met at a coffee shop near the mall. “Simone has been talking to me about you and your cousin for months,” Lisa admitted.
“She said she was worried about how ‘dependent’ you are on your family. She asked me to notice how often you talked about your cousin and let her know if it seemed like too much. “She also asked me to help set up that separate group chat for the final dress fitting,” Lisa said, eyes wet.
“She told me you were being difficult, that it would be easier to schedule without you. I trusted her. I went along with it.
I’m so sorry.”
Bethany thanked her for telling the truth. She didn’t blame Lisa. Simone was good at making her insecurity sound reasonable.
Soon after, another bridesmaid, Rachel, called. “Simone offered me two hundred dollars to lie about your cousin,” Rachel said bluntly. “She wanted me to text you and say your cousin called her controlling and toxic at the bachelorette party.
I told her no. I thought you should know she might try to get other people to say things, too.”
Bethany listened. When she hung up, she sat in silence for a long time.
Later, she told me that was when she realized Simone probably hadn’t started this campaign in the last three weeks. She thought back to little comments over the years: jokes about me “third‑wheeling,” remarks about how often we texted, suggestions that Bethany should “focus on her real family now”—meaning Simone. The hearing aid fight was just the first time Simone pushed hard enough to leave fingerprints.
Not long after those conversations, Bethany decided she was done living in Simone’s apartment. Because Bethany’s name wasn’t on the lease, she could leave without legal trouble. On moving day, our uncle and my older brother came to help her pack.
They carried boxes down the stairs and loaded a rented truck in the parking lot while Ohio sunshine bounced off the cars. Simone walked in halfway through and stopped dead. “Oh,” she said, voice icy.
“So we’re really doing this. You’re really running back to your family.”
My uncle told her calmly they were just there to help Bethany move. Simone dropped onto the couch and crossed her arms.
“This is my apartment,” she said. “I have a right to be here.”
My brother shrugged. “Technically, yeah,” he said.
“Your name’s on the lease. Beth’s isn’t. That’s why she’s the one who has to move out.”
Simone’s eyes flashed.
“Exactly,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re the one walking out on our home over something that could’ve been fixed.”
Bethany didn’t answer.
She kept packing. When everything was loaded, Simone followed them into the parking lot, bare feet slapping the asphalt. “I hope you’re happy,” she said.
“You chose them over the one person who actually loved you.”
Bethany climbed into the truck and shut the door. Two days later, Simone sent Bethany a long email. It was calm.
Thoughtful. Almost convincing. She apologized for lying about me and for trying to manipulate things.
She said she’d been afraid of losing Bethany, that she’d lashed out and made terrible choices because of that fear. She said four years together wasn’t something you just threw away. She proposed couples’ therapy, said she was willing to do the work.
Bethany forwarded me the email and asked what I thought. “I think she likes the idea of losing you less than she likes the idea of changing,” I said carefully. “But you know her better than I do.
It’s your decision.”
Bethany stared at the email for days. She talked to our aunt. To my mom.
To a therapist. In the end, she didn’t write back. “No amount of therapy works if one person never admits who they are,” she said.
“I believe in people getting help. I just don’t think she wants help. I think she wants me back in the same place so she can try again with better lies.”
She blocked Simone’s email address.
For a while, things were quiet. Bethany moved into a small one‑bedroom across town with hardwood floors and a view of a busy street. She bought a cheap gray couch off Facebook Marketplace, hung a few plants in the window, and slowly made the space hers.
She went back to work, back to brunches, back to Sunday dinners. She started going to a different yoga studio across town. She looked lighter.
Like someone who’d been carrying a heavy backpack and finally set it down. Then Simone’s mother called my mother. She said Simone was spiraling—depressed, not eating, unable to get out of bed.
She said Bethany had “destroyed her daughter’s mental health.” She asked if my mom could talk sense into Bethany, convince her to at least meet Simone “for closure.”
My mother listened and then said no. “She’s made her decision,” my mom said. “She’s an adult.
We’re not going to pressure her back into something she left for good reasons.”
Simone’s mother snapped that our family had always been cold and judgmental, that Simone had tried so hard to fit in with us “Midwestern church people” and we’d never given her a fair chance. My mom calmly repeated that Bethany’s boundaries needed to be respected and ended the call. That’s when the attacks shifted online.
My aunt runs a small catering company out of a commercial kitchen in town, doing everything from corporate lunches for Columbus offices to backyard weddings in nearby suburbs. She’d built up five‑star ratings on every site that mattered through years of 5 a.m. grocery runs and late‑night cleanups.
Within a week, three new reviews appeared—each three stars, clustered together. “Food was mediocre. Service unprofessional,” one said.
“Would not recommend.”
“Owner seemed rude and distracted,” said another. “Very disappointing.”
My aunt recognized none of the names. None of the accounts matched anyone she’d ever served.
The wording felt copy‑pasted. She tried to get the reviews taken down, but the site required proof they were fake. Screenshots of her booking calendar and invoices weren’t enough.
She lost at least two inquiries because of those reviews. When Bethany found out, she called Simone. “Tell your family to stop,” she said.
“If they keep harassing my aunt’s business, I’ll file a police report.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Simone said smoothly. “I can’t control what my family does. If they’re upset, that’s their right.”
Bethany didn’t believe her.
“Every time I think you can’t show me any more reasons to be glad I left, you do,” Bethany said. Then she hung up. Eventually, after my aunt filed multiple complaints and sent in documentation, the fake reviews were removed.
But online damage lingers. She had to work to rebuild what she’d already earned once. Around that time, Bethany got a message from Tyler, Simone’s brother.
He apologized for his family’s behavior. He said Simone had told them a very different story—that Bethany had simply “run off” for no reason, that I was controlling and manipulative and hated Simone from the start. After talking to some of the bridesmaids, he realized there was a lot Simone had conveniently left out.
“I just wanted you to know,” he wrote, “that not everyone in our family is attacking you. I hope you’re okay.”
Bethany thanked him for reaching out but told him she didn’t want contact with anyone connected to Simone, even the reasonable ones. It was just… too much.
A few weeks later, our whole family crammed into Grandma’s house for Sunday dinner. The TV in the living room played a football game with the sound low. Kids ran up and down the hallway.
The air smelled like roasted chicken, garlic bread, and lemon cleaning spray. Bethany sat at the table, laughing at one of our uncle’s ridiculous stories about a coworker. She looked younger somehow.
Softer around the eyes. After dinner, we took paper plates with pie out to the front porch and sat on the old wooden swing. The evening was warm, crickets singing in the patchy grass of the neighboring yards.
“I’m glad the wedding didn’t happen,” she said quietly, staring at the street. “Every time I think about being legally tied to her, I get this cold feeling in my chest. Being a runaway bride was messy.
A divorce would’ve been a lot worse.”
“Do you regret the four years?” I asked. She thought for a long time. “I regret the last year,” she said finally.
“When things started to feel off and I ignored it. But the beginning… wasn’t all bad. I learned about myself.
I just wish I’d listened to the small alarms. The comments about my clothes. The suggestions about which friends were ‘good influences.’ The way she talked about you.
I kept telling myself she was just particular. Turns out, she was controlling.”
She nudged my shoulder. “I also wish I’d trusted you sooner,” she said.
I swallowed hard. As for me, I’m still wearing my hearing aids. That probably goes without saying, but it feels important to say out loud.
This entire tornado started because I said no when someone asked me—to my face—to take off a medical device so I would look better in her pictures. People like me hear stories like that all the time: the boss who asks an employee not to use their cane for a company photo, the aunt who says not to bring a wheelchair into family portraits, the relative who jokes about hiding scars or birthmarks. “Just for one day.” “Just for a picture.” “Just for the aesthetic.”
Simone wanted me to erase a part of myself for a wedding that never even happened.
In trying to force that issue, she revealed exactly who she was. Bethany has told me, more than once, that she’s grateful my answer was a firm no. If I’d caved—if I’d quietly agreed to go without my hearing aids for the sake of her mood boards and Pinterest aesthetic—Simone would have found another way to push me out of Bethany’s life.
The hearing aids were just the excuse she chose. Now, Bethany is seeing someone new, very slowly. A woman she met through friends at a board game night.
No ultimatums. No secret group chats. No lectures about “cohesive photos.” They get tacos, go to small local concerts, and text when they have time.
Our family feels steady again. My aunt’s catering business is busy. My parents are okay.
Grandma still complains about the crack in the driveway and still hasn’t fixed it. Simone stopped trying to contact us a couple of months ago. I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing.
I hope, for her own sake and for whoever dates her next, that she eventually gets honest with herself. Bethany and I barely talk about her anymore. Every now and then, something will remind Bethany of a story from the early days, and she’ll tell it the way you talk about an old chapter you’ve definitely finished reading.
What all of this taught me is simple and heavy at the same time: the lines you draw around your dignity, your body, your access—they matter. Saying no to taking out my hearing aids didn’t just protect my ability to hear my cousin’s vows. It yanked back the curtain on a whole pattern of lies and control.
I never set out to blow up Bethany’s relationship. I just wanted to be able to hear at my cousin’s wedding. In the end, there was no wedding.
But my cousin still has her family, her freedom, and the chance to marry someone who sees every part of her—including the people she loves—as part of the picture, not a distraction from it.
