They were tucked away behind a massive, unadorned marble column. And they weren’t sitting on the velvet-cushioned chiavari chairs that populated the rest of the room. They were sitting on two cheap, folding plastic chairs, the kind you might find at a community center bingo night.
My mother, wearing the lovely navy blue dress she had saved up for months to buy, was staring straight ahead, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. My father, in his best gray suit—which smelled faintly, comfortingly, of the cedar and sawdust from his hardware store—sat silently, staring at the scuffed floorboards as though the humiliation were a physical weight pressing down on his shoulders.
My heart felt as if a fault line had cracked open right through my chest.
My mother noticed the movement of my white dress in her peripheral vision. She turned, and the forced, trembling smile she immediately pasted on her face broke something inside me.
“Eleanor,” she whispered, half-rising from the plastic chair. “Oh, sweetheart, you look breathtaking.”
“Mom,” I choked out, stepping into the shadows behind the pillar. “What are you doing back here? Why are you sitting on these?”
“Don’t spoil your day, sweetheart,” she said quickly, her voice shaking at the edges. She reached out, her warm, calloused hand lightly touching my arm. “It’s a beautiful venue. We have a lovely view of the ceiling.”
My father finally lifted his head. His eyes, usually so full of quiet strength and humor, were hollow. “A woman with a headset told us the front rows were strictly reserved for the immediate families and VIPs, Ellie. We didn’t want to make a fuss. It’s their world, honey. We’re just happy to be here.”
Immediate families.
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