Greatest Regret
My mother had walked both of my sisters down the aisle. Twice each.
Four weddings. Four times she held their arms and smiled for the cameras like she was presenting miracles dressed in lace. Four times she cried in the front row and told everyone who would listen that it was the proudest day of her life.
But on the morning of my wedding, she stood in the doorway of the bridal suite, looked at me in my white gown, and said, “I refuse to walk my greatest regret to the altar.”
The room went completely silent.
The hairstylist stopped with a bobby pin halfway to my head. My friend Nadia, who’d been steaming the hem of my dress, slowly set the steamer down on the carpet.
My fingers shook a little around the edge of my veil.
Standing behind Mom, my sisters, Paige and Lauren, traded little smiles. The kind they’d been trading my whole life. They’d always liked watching me get made small.
Paige touched the diamond bracelet on her wrist. Mom loved reminding everyone that she’d “helped” Paige buy it. Lauren tilted her head and whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Don’t cry, Emma. You’ll ruin the cheap mascara.”
I looked at myself in the mirror.
Twenty-nine years old. My face calm. My lips steady.
But to them, I was still the unwanted third daughter. The one who got the attic bedroom while my sisters got the big rooms on the second floor. The one who got a sheet cake at the grocery store on her birthday while they got trips to Paris.
My dad was leaning against the doorframe in his gray tuxedo. He was smiling like this was a show he’d bought tickets for.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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