“I told you I already mopped this morning.”

Her mouth tightened.

“Well, clearly you didn’t do a great job.”

I think that was the moment I knew.

Everything lined up too perfectly.

And after months of dealing with Mavis, I trusted my instincts.

I pulled out my phone.

The photo I’d sent Ryan was still sitting in our messages.

Ninety-six invitations.

Perfectly stacked.

Dead center.

I showed her.

“Mavis.”

“What?”

“That’s almost two feet from the edge.”

She stared at the picture.

“How did they slide from there?”

“I already told you.”

“I bumped the table,” she said in a high pitch.

“That’s impossible.”

I pointed between the table and the bucket.

“So you knocked the table hard enough to send all the invites flying, but didn’t even spill a drop from the bucket?”

She crossed her arms.

“I don’t appreciate being interrogated.”

“You destroyed our wedding invitations.”

“It was an accident.”

“All ninety-six?”

“I don’t know what you’re implying.”

Before I could respond, the front door opened.

Ryan had come home about twenty minutes earlier than expected.

“What happened?”

Mavis answered immediately.

“Tell her she’s overreacting. It was an accident.”

Ryan didn’t move.

“What was?”

She sighed.

“I knocked the invitations into the mop bucket.”

Ryan looked at me.

I handed him my phone.

“Look where they were.”

He studied the photo.

Then he looked at the actual dining table.

Then the bucket.

“You’re sure you want to call this a mishap?”

Mavis crossed her arms.

“Because that’s what it was.”

Ryan kept looking at the ruined invitations.

Then he said something I hadn’t expected.

“Don’t reorder a single invitation.”

I blinked.

“What?”

Mavis’s smile faltered.

“We’re not replacing them.”

I stared at him.

“Ryan, people need invitations.”

“We have a wedding in ten weeks.”

“I know.”

“Not anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ryan squeezed my hand.

“We’re changing the wedding.”

Mavis stared at him.

“No, you’re not!”

He turned toward her.

“Yes. We are.”

Frank arrived shortly afterward.

He took one look at the ruined invitations, then at Mavis, and barely said a word throughout dinner.

That night, after his parents left, I asked Ryan if he had been serious.

He opened his laptop.

“Completely.”

“About what?”

“Small wedding.”

“We already have a small wedding.”

He turned the screen toward me.

“Smaller.”

“How much smaller?”

There was a beach resort on the screen.

I stared at him.

“You’re joking.”

“No.”

“Ryan.”

“Think about it.”

“You. Me. Your sister. My brother. Our closest friends. Maybe twenty people.”

“My aunt.”

“Obviously.”

“Your dad?”

He hesitated.

“Probably.”

“You really want to do this?”

“I want to marry you.”

He continued.

“I’ve spent months watching Mum turn our wedding into something neither of us wants.”

“I don’t care about chair covers. I don’t care about centerpieces. I don’t care whether Dennis, my mysterious second cousin, gets chicken or steak.”

I looked again at the beach resort.

“So, today was just the nail in the coffin?”

Part of me hated the idea that Mavis’s behavior might end up determining what our wedding became.

Then I pictured twenty-four people standing on a beach instead of ninety-six people sitting in a room she’d spent months trying to control.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

Ryan looked at me.

“But not because she ruined anything. This is what we want. This would be perfect.”

“Exactly.”

Two days later, we canceled the venue, caterer, and florist.

Just in time, too.

Then we booked a small destination ceremony.

Twenty-four guests.

Immediate family.

Closest friends.

No extra tables.

No seating-chart politics.

No mysterious second cousins.

Ryan told his parents over dinner.

Frank stared at him.

“Destination wedding?”

“Yes.”

Mavis looked horrified.

“After everything we’ve already planned?”

Ryan gave her a look.

“You mean everything we planned.”

She ignored that.

“Where?”

He told her.

Within thirty seconds, her reaction shifted from offended to excited.

“Oh.”

She sat back.

“Well. I suppose it could be lovely.”

Then she started asking questions.

“What month?”

“Same date.”

“Oh, wonderful. I’ll need something lighter, then.”

She immediately started discussing dresses, shoes, and whether she could wear pale champagne without it photographing as white.

On the drive home, I finally looked at Ryan.

“Are you going to tell her?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

He kept his eyes on the road.

“Give it a day or two. She always assumes. I think it’s time she learned a lesson.”

That happened three days later.

Mavis called while we were eating breakfast.

Ryan put her on speaker.

“I need the hotel details,” she said.

“For what?”

“So I can book our room.”

There was a pause.

“For the wedding.”

Ryan buttered his toast.

“What about it?”

Another pause.

“What?”

Ryan calmly answered.

“Mom, you’re not coming.”

Silence.

I stopped chewing.

Then Mavis laughed.

A short, confused laugh.

“What?”

“I’m your mother.”

“You’re not invited.”