there’s getting from the station to the venue, and food, and your father’s knees have been bothering him. Four hours there and back is a lot at our age.”
“You’re fifty-eight.”
“Don’t be sharp.”
Lena pressed her fingers against her forehead. “I offered to buy your tickets. Elias’s aunt offered her guest room. You wouldn’t need a hotel. I told you that three times.”
“And we appreciated the offer,” her mother said, in a tone that made appreciation sound like a punishment. “But your father doesn’t like taking charity.”
“He took five hundred dollars from me in March for the water heater.”
“That was different. That was family.”
Lena almost laughed. It came out as a breath.
“Mom. It’s my wedding.”
“I know that.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
Silence followed. Lena could picture her mother exactly: standing in the kitchen of the old brick house where Lena had grown up, wiping an already clean counter, lips pressed together, eyes flicking toward the hallway to see whether her husband was listening.
Her mother lowered her voice. “Theo is under a lot of pressure at work. Mara isn’t comfortable traveling in bad weather. Your father thinks this whole thing has become more expensive than necessary.”
“This whole thing is my marriage.”
“Lena.”
There it was. The warning.
The same warning that had trained her to shrink at family dinners, to apologize before asking for anything, to make herself useful so no one could call her selfish.
Her mother continued, “We’ll celebrate when you get back. Maybe lunch somewhere. Your father mentioned the Italian place if they still have that weekday special.”
A weekday special.
In exchange for a wedding.
Lena looked down at the gold ink drying on Theo’s place card. Her brother would not come either. Of course he wouldn’t. Theo went where applause was easiest. Lena’s wedding offered him nothing but the inconvenience of being kind.
“So none of you are coming,” she said.
Her mother exhaled. “We’re sending love.”
Lena closed her eyes.
Love had always been the word they used when they didn’t want to give anything real.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Don’t make this dramatic.”
But Lena had already ended the call.
When Elias came home an hour later, he found the soup burned to the bottom of the pot and Lena sitting on the kitchen floor in her socks, place cards scattered around her. He didn’t rush at her with loud concern. That was one of the reasons she loved him. He knew panic did not need an audience. He simply set down his garment bag, took off his coat, and lowered himself beside her.
“Tell me,” he said.
She told him.
She expected anger, maybe a few forced reassurances. Instead, Elias listened with his hands clasped loosely between his knees, his face growing quieter with every sentence.
When she finished, she whispered, “I should remove their chairs.”
“No,” he said.
She looked at him.
His eyes were steady. “Don’t erase the hurt to make them look better.”
“I don’t want people asking questions.”
“Then they can ask me.”
Lena shook her head. “It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s not your embarrassment.”
The sentence moved through her slowly. Not your embarrassment. She had spent her life carrying feelings that belonged to other people. Her father’s
