I kept them in a drawer in my room, not sure if I’d ever get to give them to her. But buying them made me feel close. Some nights, I’d scroll through old photos her first day of school, birthdays, the Seattle trip when she was 16.
Videos of her dancing in the kitchen, singing in the car, sneaking up behind me to yell, boo. I’d laugh. Then I’d cry.
Because it felt like mourning. But I wasn’t grieving someone who had died. I was grieving someone who had disappeared while still being alive.
And that, that kind of grief, it doesn’t have a funeral. It just lingers. Then came the moment that broke me.
Not with shouting. Not with some dramatic betrayal. But with laughter.
I was making lentil soup on a quiet Thursday. Something warm. Something to feel like love in a bowl.
Then my phone dinged. A notification, you’ve been added to Ivy’s Bridal Babes group chat. My heart fluttered.
Maybe this is it, I thought. Maybe she’s bringing me in again. I opened the chat.
At first it was harmless. Pictures of bridesmaids trying on dresses. Color palettes.
A mood board with fairy lights and mason jars. Then came the messages. Dozens of them.
From girls I barely knew. Roommates. Cousins.
Bridesmaids who had met me once, maybe twice. But they were talking about me like I was a warning label. Ari said her mom’s gonna lose it if she’s not front and center during the vows.
Classic overbearing mom energy. Just let the girl have her day. If she wears white, I swear I’ll scream.
Someone make sure she doesn’t do anything weird. And then, right there between the emojis and the snark was Ivy’s message. She means well, but she’s just too much sometimes.
Everything turns into a guilt trip with her. I honestly don’t have the energy. I couldn’t breathe.
I read it again. And again. It didn’t change.
She said that. About me. To them.
It wasn’t private. It wasn’t a mistake. It was her.
And they laughed. I sat down the soup boiling over on the stove behind me, hissing like it knew what I’d just read. But I didn’t move.
I didn’t cry. Not yet. I didn’t reply.
I didn’t leave the chat. I just read every single word, every line until the pain had weight. And then quietly I stood up, wiped my hands on a towel, and left the group.
I didn’t call her. I didn’t send a message. I just felt small, like I’d become a punchline in the story I thought I helped write.
The next morning, I stood in front of my closet. It was early, too early. The light outside was soft, that strange hush of a day still deciding who it wants to be.
I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. My pillow still held the shape of my head damp at the edges, and the soup pot sat in the sink untouched, burned around the rim.
I hadn’t even eaten dinner, just sat there scrolling, reading her words on loop like a punishment I couldn’t stop giving myself. And now in the quiet of dawn, I stood staring at the dress. That dress, still hanging there, in its garment bag blushed pink and soft like a lie wrapped in satin.
I pulled it out slowly, unzipped the bag, and held it up to my body in the mirror. It looked beautiful. Still did.
But I didn’t, not because I wasn’t enough, but because the woman in the reflection wasn’t invited to wear it anymore. I put it on anyway. I needed to feel the weight of it.
I needed to look at myself and understand what she had chosen to leave behind. I stood in the kitchen again. Same chair, same spot.
That ridiculous little necklace box still unopened. Coffee in the pot fresh this time, but still untouched. I looked out the window, imagining the ceremony that would happen in a few hours.
I saw her walking down the aisle, smiling. I pictured Caleb waiting nervous and adoring. The music, the flowers, the applause.
And I wondered for the hundredth time if she would think of me. Even once. And then I stopped wondering.
Because it didn’t matter anymore. By noon, I changed into pajamas, slipped the dress back into the bag, and shoved it under the bed like it was something to be ashamed of. I curled up on the couch with a blanket that smelled like lavender and laundry soap and tried to disappear into it.
There was no movie moment, no last minute text, no knock on the door, no sudden apology, just a slow, steady heartbreak. And silence. I didn’t scream.
I didn’t break anything. I didn’t even cry. I just stared.
Because when someone shows you that they don’t see you anymore, not as a person, not as a mother, not as someone worth inviting, you stop offering more of yourself for them to discard. I wasn’t bitter. I wasn’t even angry.
I was just tired. Tired of twisting myself into a shape that might fit into her new life. Tired of waiting for the phone to ring.
Tired of hoping love would sound like it used to. And so I did something small. Something quiet.
I lit a candle. Not for her. For me.
I poured myself a cup of tea and sat in the living room, letting the steam warm my face. And in that stillness, I remembered someone I hadn’t thought about in years. Me.
Before motherhood swallowed me whole. Before every moment, every decision, every breath revolved around being someone’s mom. I remembered the woman who used to journal every night.
Who took walks just to feel the wind on her skin. Who once painted for fun even though none of the canvases turned out quite right. I remembered her.
And I missed her. And right there with a candle flickering beside me and the necklace still sitting untouched in its box, I made a quiet vow. If I was being written out of her story, then I would start writing my own.
I didn’t need a seat at the wedding. I needed a seat at my own table. The day after the wedding felt heavier than the wedding itself.
There was no more hope to distract me. No more countdowns to pretend I’d be part of something. No more lingering fantasy that somehow I’d be needed.
Ariel was married and I hadn’t been there. I hadn’t seen her in the dress. I hadn’t walked her down the aisle.
I hadn’t heard her say I do or watched her dance beneath the lights I once imagined helping her hang. I had been erased. It was a Sunday our old pancake day.
The kind where we used to hum jazz in the kitchen and flip strawberry pancakes in our pajamas. She’d dance barefoot holding the spatula like a microphone singing Ella Fitzgerald at the top of her lungs. I loved those mornings more than she’ll ever know.
But this Sunday, no jazz, no strawberries, just silence. A silence so thick I could barely breathe through it. I wandered the house like a ghost unsure what to do with my hands, my thoughts, my body.
I picked up the phone twice, hovered over her name. Congratulations! I miss you. Why did you do this? But I never typed it.
Instead, I opened social media and there she was, smiling in her wedding photos like something out of a magazine. Her caption, the best day of our lives. And the comments, hundreds of them.
You look stunning. Such a beautiful couple. So happy for you both.
Not one mention of me, not one question about where I was. And then I saw it, a photo of Ariel and Judith Caleb’s mother. Cheeks pressed together, arms wrapped tight like they’d loved each other for a lifetime.
The caption, my second mom, thank you for making everything so magical. Second mom, as if I’d been the temporary one, the placeholder. I stared at the screen until my vision blurred, not from tears, but from disbelief.
I closed the app and walked to the fridge. Inside was the cake I’d made the day before, three tiered, chocolate raspberry her favorite. I’d planned to light a candle slice at toast to her alone in my kitchen.
But now, now I couldn’t even look at it. I pulled it out, tore off the lid, carried it straight to the trash, didn’t take a bite, didn’t hesitate, just dropped it in. And with it, everything I had been holding onto.
I slid down to the floor, back pressed to the cabinet’s legs folded, heart cracked wide open. And I cried. Not the quiet kind, not the polite someone might hear me kind, but the raw, breathless sobs that shake you from the inside out.
I cried for the daughter I raised, for the bond we had lost, for every school project, every bedtime story, every scraped knee I had kissed. I cried because I had tried. I had shown up.
And still, I had been left behind. Eventually, I dragged myself to the couch and wrapped a blanket around my body like armor. I stared at the ceiling for hours, not thinking, not hoping, just existing.
And when I finally drifted to sleep, I dreamed of her. She was small again, maybe five or six in a sunflower dress holding a daisy in one hand. She looked up at me and asked, are you okay, mommy? I reached for her, but she ran.
Into a fog I couldn’t follow. I woke up tangled in my blanket tears, soaking my cheeks. And that’s when I knew I had hit bottom.
There was nowhere lower to go, only forward. The morning after the dream, I didn’t move for a long time. I sat at the kitchen table in my robe, watching dust particles dance in a sunbeam, like tiny ghosts.
The house was still not peaceful, just hollow. Like the air had forgotten how to hold sound. I looked around and realized how much clutter grief leaves behind.
Gift bags, tissue paper, wedding ribbons in a drawer meant for joy. A hope chest that had turned into a storage bin for what could have been. So I started cleaning, not furiously, not like I was on a memory.
I pulled everything out, unused candles, spare champagne flutes, a set of monogrammed towels I never got the chance to gift. All of it into boxes, into bags, away. And at the bottom of one drawer, tucked beneath a layer of forgotten plans, I found the lavender box.
The necklace box, still wrapped, still perfect. My hands trembled as I lifted it. I sat down slowly, setting it on the table like it might explode.