“That you didn’t know they existed isn’t your fault,” she said, and her voice was steady and clean.

“Inviting their mother here today to humiliate her in front of everyone — that is.”

Grayson scrambled.

It was a joke, he said, a stupid joke among friends, something that had gotten out of hand, something meaningless.

Serena took out her phone.

Late the night before, one of his groomsmen had shared a voice note in the group chat — Grayson, laughing, describing how he pictured me arriving that day, stepping off a city bus in a thrift-store dress for everyone to pity.

She had listened to it that very morning while she dressed, and had made herself believe it was only nerves, only the ugly bravado of a man about to be married.