Something in me went white-hot. I opened my mouth to unleash two years of grief and rage on my sister right there in the middle of Claire’s wedding, consequences be damned.
But I never got the chance.
Because Mia moved.
I felt it before I saw it — the chair shifting under my hands. My daughter, who had just been crumpling in on herself, wiped both cheeks hard with the backs of her small hands. Once, twice. She sniffed. She sat up straight. And she reached down and locked the brakes on her chair with a firm, deliberate click I heard in the silence.
Then she put her hands to the wheels, and she turned herself, and she rolled away from Donna — away from all of us — straight across that silent dance floor toward the DJ’s table.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. We all just watched this ten-year-old girl in a lavender dress wheel herself calmly across the floor, curls still bouncing, cheeks still wet.
