Two catering employees had been eating there when I arrived. One had already picked up her plate and moved away, apparently worried that she was caught in a family dispute.
I felt ashamed for having drawn them into it.
“I’m going home,” I said.
Adrian stepped aside.
He didn’t try to stop me again.
But Vanessa followed as I helped Grandma toward the ballroom entrance.
“Clara, if you walk out now, don’t expect me to forget it.”
I stopped.
“Vanessa, I came here because I love you. I bought a dress, took time off work, helped you with the photographs of Dad, and sat through the ceremony trying not to cry because he wasn’t here.”
Her face tightened.
“I know.”
“I didn’t ask to be important today. I asked to sit beside our grandmother.”
She said nothing.
I looked at the empty place beside Table Seven.
“You could have asked me to move. I might even have agreed. Instead, you waited until I was standing in front of everyone and told me I wasn’t really your sister.”
For a moment, she looked almost sorry.
Then her eyes moved toward the photographer again.
“Can we talk about this after the portraits?”
“No.”
I turned toward the exit.
Aunt Patricia walked beside Grandma, and my cousin Rachel left her chair to help us with the heavy ballroom doors.
Behind us, the music resumed.
The reception would continue.
Nearly two hundred people still had dinner to eat, speeches to hear, and a marriage to celebrate.
But four of us walked into the hotel lobby.
And the moment the ballroom doors closed, Grandma Margaret began to cry.
I’d seen Grandma cry only a handful of times.
At Grandpa’s funeral.
When my father was diagnosed with cancer.
And the morning she packed away his photographs after he died.
