At the restaurant, my sister announced, “Rachel, go find another table, this one’s for family, not adopted girls.” They all laughed and agreed. Then the waiter placed a $3,270 bill in front of me for their entire dinner. I smiled, took a sip, and quietly paid.
But then I heard a voice behind me: “Just a moment, please.”
I was seated behind a pillar at my sister’s wedding. Everyone pretended I wasn’t family.
Then a stranger sat beside me and said, “Just follow my lead and pretend you’re my date.” When he stood to speak, everyone turned and my sister stopped smiling.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning. From the moment I received that cream-colored invitation in the mail three months earlier.
The envelope arrived on a Tuesday morning in April. I was living in Denver then, working as a pastry chef at a boutique bakery downtown. My apartment was small but cozy, filled with the scent of vanilla and cinnamon from my experimental baking sessions. I’d been up since four that morning, perfecting a new recipe for honey-lavender croissants. So when I finally stumbled home around two in the afternoon, I almost missed the elegant envelope wedged between bills and grocery store circulars.
Victoria was getting married. My older sister, the golden child, the daughter who could do no wrong in our mother’s eyes.
The invitation was formal, traditional, exactly what I expected from her. White embossed lettering announced her union to someone named Gregory, a name I’d never heard her mention during our increasingly rare phone calls. I should have been happy for her. Sisters are supposed to be happy for each other during milestone moments. But as I held that invitation, all I could think about was the last family dinner we’d attended together six months earlier.
Our mother had hosted Thanksgiving at her house in the suburbs. I’d brought a pumpkin cheesecake I’d spent two days perfecting, layers of spiced cream cheese and ginger snap crust that had turned out beautifully. Victoria had brought store-bought pie.
“Elizabeth, you really shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble,” my mother said, barely glancing at my dessert before placing it on the far corner of the buffet table. “Victoria’s pie looks lovely, so classic and traditional.”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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