She had, by every external measure, won the life she said she deserved.

And she had, in winning it, lost the only things that ever actually matter, the ability to be genuinely present with the people you love, the experience of being loved back for who you are rather than admired for how you appear.

She would go home from this wedding to her beautiful house, and she would have no daughters in it, and no grandchildren who knew her, and no one who loved her for herself rather than for the show she put on.

I would go home to a small house full of the six women I had raised, exhausted and unglamorous and richer than Laura would ever be.