Chapter 2
I did not sit in the chair beside the center aisle.
"Mrs. Hale?" the usher whispered. "The ceremony is about to begin."
I turned away from the pew and walked back through the side door.
Richard caught me in the hallway.
"Where are you going?"
"To speak to Emily."
"She's about to get married."
I held up the program.
"My name isn't in it."
His eyes moved over the page, but he did not look surprised.
That hurt more than the missing name.
"You knew," I said.
Richard glanced toward the church. The organ had stopped. Everyone was waiting.
"This is not the time."
"You knew, and you said nothing."
The bridal room door opened behind him.
Emily stood there in her wedding dress, one hand holding up the skirt. Her face changed when she saw the program in my hand.
"Claire."
Not Mom.
Claire.
"Did you approve this?" I asked.
Her fingers tightened around the white fabric.
"Vanessa is my biological mother."
"I know who she is."
"She missed everything. She wanted one day where people saw her as my mother."
I looked at Emily's face. I had washed that face when she was six. Held a cold cloth against it when she had a fever. Wiped mascara from beneath her eyes after her first boyfriend left her crying in our driveway.
"Where does that leave me?" I asked.
Emily looked past me at Richard.
He answered for her.
"It's one seat and one line in a program. Don't turn it into something ugly."
My chest tightened.
"I didn't remove my own name."
Emily took a step toward me.
"Dad said you would understand."
There it was.
The sentence they had built the whole day around.
Claire would understand.
Claire always understood.
"Did you ask me?" I said.
Emily opened her mouth, then closed it.
"Did you personally ask me if I was willing to disappear from your wedding?"
"Please." Her eyes moved toward the church doors. "Everyone is waiting."
"That isn't an answer."
Her face hardened.
"This is already difficult enough. Please don't ruin it."
For one weak second, I almost apologized.
Then I remembered the coordinator's uncomfortable expression. The bridesmaid looking away. Richard reading the program without surprise.
They had all known before I did.
"I won't stop your wedding," I said. "But this conversation is not over."
Richard reached for my arm.
I stepped away before he could touch me.
The ceremony began three minutes late.
I watched from the end of the third pew while Richard walked Emily down the aisle. Vanessa sat in the front, crying into a lace handkerchief.
No one looked at me.
At the reception, I found my place card at Table Fourteen between Richard's elderly cousin and a woman from Emily's old dance class.
The family table stood near the center of the room.
Richard sat on one side of Emily.
Vanessa sat on the other.
I picked up my place card and walked toward them.
Emily saw me coming. Her new husband, Mark, followed her eyes.
Before I reached the table, Vanessa rose.
She held several folded pages in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.
When she saw me, she smiled.
"I prepared a few memories," she said, "from between a mother and her daughter."