The kind that comes from being in a room where everyone thinks your role has already been decided.
There had been signs all evening.
My mother had ordered the seafood tower without asking anyone if they wanted it. “We have to do this properly,” she said, waving away the menu like a queen bored by the concept of money.
My father had chosen a bottle of wine by pointing to the most expensive one on the page and telling the sommelier, “We’ll celebrate in a way that’s worthy of my daughter.” He meant Lauren, of course. When he said daughter in public, there was often a tiny pause afterward, almost as if he forgot for a second there were two of us and had to decide which one counted.
Lauren had ordered two desserts during the entrée course because she wanted “options for the table content.” Content. The word landed in me like a pebble thrown against glass. She said it so casually, as though content were what everyone else called life. “We need movement, texture, indulgence,” she explained to the waiter. “One warm, one cold. Something with gold leaf if you have it.”
