Chapter 2

By midnight, the house was dark.

Celeste was upstairs in the front guest room—the space that had held my manuscript bins until yesterday morning.

I sat on a wooden stool at the kitchen island, peeling wet index cards apart so the ink wouldn't ruin the notes.

Grant came down the hall barefoot, an old gray gym shirt hanging off his shoulders.

He pulled a pitcher of water from the fridge and drank from a glass without offering me one.

"You're still sitting here," he murmured, wiping his chin. "Tessa is twenty-four, Mara. She’s getting married next month. She’s allowed to want her mother in the room."

"Her mother didn't send a postcard for thirteen years, Grant."

"She was sick," he said, his voice dropping into that immediate, defensive crouch he kept for Celeste. "She had nothing. I had to keep things steady for Tessa back then. Now she’s back, she's well, and our daughter wants her there."

"And what am I?" I asked. "The cleaning service?"

Grant set his glass on the counter with a dull click.

"You're my wife," he said, as if that word settled the mortgage. "Stop turning every family arrangement into a personal trial. It’s exhausting."

My phone buzzed against the stone.

An Instagram notification lit the glass:

Tessa Hollowell shared a reel.

I swiped the screen.

The clip was thirty seconds long, taken from the dark hallway near the coat rack.

In the center of the frame, Grant and Celeste sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the piano bench, their hands crossing over the keys in a slow waltz.

Tessa stood behind them, her face pressed against Celeste's hair, her eyes shiny with tears.

The caption already had a hundred likes from the neighborhood:

Fifteen years of quiet, and they still know the tune. Some things wait for you to come home. #HollowellWedding #Parents #FamilyFirst

I scrolled down to the comments.

— "Who was the woman by the kitchen door in the coat?"

Tessa’s reply was right underneath:

That’s my stepmom, Mara.

Stepmom.

Not the woman who stayed up three nights with her during her sophomore bouts of bronchitis.

Not the woman who co-signed her student apartment when Grant's business credit was locked.

Stepmom.

A word for someone who showed up late and sat in the second row.

The phone vibrated again with an email alert from Zola, the wedding site Tessa had built during the summer.

My address was still linked because I had paid the platform's setup fee in June.

The notification read: Your wedding website has been updated.

I opened the link.

Under the photo of Tessa and Owen by the river, the family page had been redone:

PARENTS OF THE BRIDE

Grant Hollowell — Father of the Bride

Master builder, neighborhood fixture, and the man who gave Tessa her foundation.

Celeste Arden — Mother of the Bride

Pianist, teacher, and Tessa’s first musical compass. Reunited for this season.

There was no picture of me.

There was no bio.

At the very bottom of the page, in tiny gray print below the parking notes, ran a single line:

Logistics & Food Inquiries:

Direct all vendor access and kitchen arrangements to Mara Ellison ([email protected]).

I looked at the letters until the screen dimmed.

"Did you see this, Grant?"

He walked behind my stool, looking over my shoulder at the blue text.

He didn't flinch.

"Celeste’s parents gave Tessa three thousand dollars for the tent deposit, Mara. They wanted their daughter listed so their church friends wouldn't whisper."

"I’ve lived with Tessa since she was nine years old," I said.

"And nobody’s erasing that," Grant said, his tone turning into that heavy, reasonable paste he used on angry customers. "You're her stepmother. That’s what it is on paper. Putting three parents on the top line looks messy. It looks like an old court fight."

"So I get put below the parking directions."

"You're good with schedules, Mara!" he said, spreading his hands. "You know how to keep people moving. Why does everything have to be a personal slight? Can't you let the kid have her day?"

"My card is on file for the chair delivery," I said quietly.

Grant frowned. "What does that have to do with the website?"

I didn't answer him.

I went to the rental portal where we had reserved one hundred twenty white folding chairs for the lawn.

I opened the billing tab.

I clicked the little trash-can icon beside my debit card.

Then I wrote two sentences in the delivery note:

Payment authorization for Order #4419 has been removed.

Please send all remaining invoices to the hosts listed on the site: Grant Hollowell or Celeste Arden.

— Mara Ellison.

I hit Confirm.

The screen flashed green.

Grant saw the logo, his brow pulling down hard.

"Mara," he warned, his voice turning rough. "What did you just cancel?"

"I didn't cancel anything," I said, closing the laptop with a quiet click. "I just moved the bills to the people on the letterhead."

Ten minutes later, on the narrow cot in the cellar, my phone gave two sharp buzzes against my shoes.

A notification from the family group thread:

Tessa Hollowell removed your admin access.

Tessa Hollowell changed the group photo.

The new picture was a snapshot from nineteen-ninety-nine: Grant in a faded t-shirt, carrying five-year-old Tessa on his neck, with Celeste laughing beside them by a lake.

The title of the thread read:

Hollowell Family Wedding (Official).

I turned the screen against the concrete floor, pulled the woolen blanket over my shoulders, and listened to the furnace hum in the dark.