On the morning my ex-husband was supposed to marry my younger sister, our nine-year-old daughter asked me a question I had no idea how to answer.
A few hours later, she walked into their wedding carrying a small white gift bag.
By that afternoon, my cousin was calling me in a panic.
“Annie, you need to come here. Amelia just stopped the ceremony.”
And apparently, the entire family was standing there waiting to see what my daughter would do next.
—
That morning, I was fastening the last button on the back of Amelia’s dress when she quietly called my name.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
She stood in front of the mirror, but she wasn’t admiring the dress.
Her expression was unusually serious.
“If Dad marries Aunt Lina today… is she still my aunt?”
I froze for half a second.
“Of course she is.”
Amelia frowned.
“Even if she keeps telling me she’s going to be my bonus mom?”
I swallowed.
“She’ll still be your aunt.”
She seemed to think about that.
Then she asked another question.
“And you’ll still be her sister?”
This time, I couldn’t answer.
I turned away, pretending to straighten something on the dresser.
Amelia waited several seconds before quietly picking up the little white gift bag Lina had sent over for her.
“Okay.”
There was something about the way she said it that stayed with me.
Not angry.
Not confused.
Just thoughtful.
A few minutes later, my mother arrived to take Amelia to the wedding.
Mom looked at my clothes and immediately frowned.
“You’re really not coming?”
“I already told you I wasn’t.”
She let out one of those dramatic sighs I had heard countless times over the previous months.
“Annie, you’ve been angry long enough. Lina is still your sister.”
I stared at her.
That was exactly what everyone kept reminding me.
Apparently being sisters mattered when I was expected to forgive Lina.
Nobody had seemed nearly as concerned about sisterhood when Lina started sleeping with my husband.
Mom continued.
“She deserves to be happy too.”
Amelia was standing by the front door listening to every word.
I refused to argue in front of her.
Instead, I crouched down and hugged her.
“Have fun, baby.”
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too.”
As they headed outside, Mom muttered under her breath,
“You could at least behave like a sister for one day.”
I closed the door before I said something unforgivable.
My other three children were already fighting over what to watch on television.
I curled beneath a blanket on the couch and tried desperately not to imagine the wedding taking place three towns away.
Ryan at the altar.
Lina dressed in white.
My parents smiling proudly.
Everyone celebrating as though there had never been another wife.
Another sister.
Another family.
Another baby.
I closed my eyes.
