“She said, ‘Your mother called me her daughter,’ and the room tilted. I tasted copper and the lace on my tongue like betrayal.
Everyone waited, forks paused mid-air. My husband’s jaw worked; he looked older. Carla let the letter fall open on her palm as if it might unravel us further. ‘She wrote that she couldn’t keep it secret anymore,’ Carla read. ‘She left the dress for me because she wanted to be present at my wedding, even after she was gone.’
No one had asked my consent. No one had thought the story through. My mother’s careful hands, the nights I spent ironing tissue paper, the cedar-scented vows I made to myself — reduced to an inheritance decided behind my back. I stood, and the room seemed to shrink to the space between my feet and the table edge. I heard my voice and didn’t recognize it. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked my husband. ‘Why keep a letter that changes everything?’
He looked at me as if I had become a stranger. ‘I didn’t know how,’ he said simply. ‘And then… I was afraid of breaking you.’ His fear sat on his face like a confession.
Carla’s face softened. ‘I thought giving it back would heal things,’ she said. ‘I thought wearing it would connect us.’
Connect? The word sounded like a blade. I wanted to rip the lace into confetti and scatter it across their promises. Instead I walked to the cedar chest, opened it, and touched the folded tissue. For a long moment I let the room watch me decide.
I closed the chest and turned to them. ‘If family is handed out like favors,’ I said, ‘then I’m done waiting to be given mine.’ I walked outside and finally let myself cry in garden.
