Six weeks before my sister’s wedding, she told me she didn’t want me there. Not in those exact words, but close enough that there was no graceful misunderstanding available to either of us.
I had signed the contract for her venue. I had paid the deposit. And I was, apparently, not on the guest list.
The call came on a Tuesday evening in late February. I was sitting at my kitchen table with a glass of wine and a stack of project timelines I was supposed to be reviewing, and my phone lit up with Claire’s name. We hadn’t talked in about ten days, which was longer than usual but not alarming. She’d been busy with wedding things, I’d assumed. I picked up.
She started with small talk, which should have been my first signal. Claire is not a small-talk person. She’s twenty-nine, seven years younger than me, and she has always communicated in the direct and slightly abrupt style of someone who considers conversational preamble a form of dishonesty. She asked how work was going. She asked if I’d tried the new Thai place near my apartment. She mentioned that Owen’s parents were flying in from Colorado next month for a pre-wedding dinner.
Then she said: “I need to talk to you about the guest list.”
I put down my wine.
“We’ve been going back and forth about numbers,” she said, “and honestly, Elise, I think it’s going to be easier for everyone if you’re not at the ceremony.”