She’d left the card on my pillow.
And she’d sent the message to the wedding coordinator after sunrise, assuming I’d be too humiliated to attend.
“She said you were supposed to stay upstairs until everyone left for the church,” Michael whispered.
I pressed a hand against my forehead.
“She planned that?”
“Yes.”
I thought of the careful blue handwriting.
The tiny heart.
The silk dress she’d admired at our last dinner together.
“Michael, why would she do this?”
He was quiet.
Then he said, “Because she thought you were going to take over the wedding.”
I stared at the telephone.
“Take over?”
“She said people would spend the whole evening talking about your business, your money, and the gifts. She said you were the person everybody wanted to impress.”
I remembered Sabrina’s face whenever someone complimented me.
The little smiles that never quite reached her eyes.
“Did she tell you what she expected to happen after the wedding?”
Michael hesitated.
“She thought once we owned the properties, we’d be able to make decisions without needing your approval.”
I closed my eyes again.
The gifts were intended to be outright transfers.
If they’d been completed as planned, that part would have been true.
Michael and Sabrina would have become the owners.
And I’d have lost the ability to control what they did with those buildings.
“She wanted me absent when the gifts were presented,” I said.
“Yes.”
“But she still wanted the gifts.”
His silence answered me.
Then he whispered, “Mom, I’m so sorry.”
