of a wedding Eleanor had helped pay for, her own son was telling her she was an inconvenience.
“I have a seat,” Eleanor said. Her voice was controlled, though her fingers had gone cold around her purse strap. “Lily told me she saved one beside the aisle.”
Celeste gave a faint sigh. Not loud. Just enough.
“Eleanor,” she said, as if speaking to a child, “this is not the moment for confusion.”
The word confusion was not accidental.
Over the last year, Celeste had begun using it whenever Eleanor disagreed with her. Confused. Forgetful. Overwhelmed. Too emotional. Words soft enough to sound concerned, sharp enough to cut.
Mark looked toward the garden.
At the far end of the lawn, through the gates, Eleanor could see a flash of white near the bridal cottage. Lily’s veil. Only for a second. The wind lifted it like a wing, then the hedge swallowed the view.
Eleanor’s heart lurched.
She almost called out.
She imagined Lily hearing her voice, turning, running across the lawn with her flowers in one hand. She imagined the guests watching a scene unfold before the ceremony had even begun. She imagined Celeste’s expression hardening into triumph, Mark accusing her of ruining everything, Lily standing between them in her dress with tears streaking her makeup.
No.
Eleanor had not come to turn Lily’s wedding into a battlefield.
She lifted her chin, opened her purse, and touched the folded handkerchief inside. The lace edge brushed her fingertips like a warning from the past.
“You’re right,” Eleanor said.
Mark blinked, suspicious of her calm.
“Today should be peaceful,” she continued. “I hope it is.”
Then she turned around and walked back down the gravel drive.
No one followed.
The gravel shifted beneath her low heels. Her knees ached. The violin music began again behind her, bright and delicate, as if nothing had happened. Each step took her farther from the roses she had chosen, the lanterns she had ordered, the glasshouse rental she had quietly secured when Mark claimed money was tight.
At the curb, the taxi driver hurried out and opened the door. He was a young man with kind eyes and a small air freshener shaped like a cedar tree swinging from his mirror.
“Ma’am?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
Eleanor looked back once.
Through the iron bars, guests were moving again. Mark had turned away. Celeste was laughing with a woman in lavender. The gate attendant stared at the tablet like it might explain what he had just witnessed.
“I am not all right,” Eleanor said.
The driver’s face softened.
She got into the back seat, placed her purse on her lap, and waited until the estate disappeared behind a line of cypress trees.
Only then did she take out her phone.
Her hands did not tremble until she saw Mr. Alden’s name in her contacts.
The lawyer had handled her husband’s estate twelve years earlier. He had drawn up the trust for Lily’s education. He had warned Eleanor three times that making Mark a secondary administrator was unwise.
“He is my son,” she had said then.
Now the words tasted foolish.
Mr. Alden answered on the fourth ring.
“Eleanor?”
She closed her eyes. The taxi smelled faintly of rain and peppermint gum.
“I need you to prepare
