The Willowmere signing was, I can see now, the apotheosis of this dynamic. Claire had a vision she couldn’t afford. I stepped in. I was efficient and organized and I dealt with the contract and wrote the check and everything was handled, and Claire was grateful and also, probably, reminded in the most vivid possible way that she was still the little sister whose things were being managed by her older sibling. Even her own wedding.
I don’t think she consciously decided to uninvite me because of this. I think her reasoning was genuinely about the vibe and the aesthetic and the presentation to Owen’s family. But I also think the centerpiece comment and a hundred other moments like it gave her enough evidence for a story she’d been building for years, a story in which my presence was a kind of shadow over her, and she had finally found a moment to step out of it.
I understand this. I am also thirty-six years old, and I signed a contract and paid twenty-four hundred dollars and was about to pay seventy-two hundred more, and being understood is not the same as being treated fairly.
Both of these things can be true. I have held both of them, not always gracefully, for the past several months.
## Becca Calls Me
Becca, the maid of honor, called me on a Saturday morning about a week after my conversation with Owen. She had been given my number by Claire, which I knew because Becca opened the call by saying: “Claire doesn’t know I’m calling you, just so you know.”