There was no I miss the girls.

There was no I know I have a great deal to answer for.

There was, at the very center of it, that phrase, my new family, which told me that in Laura’s mind our daughters and I were the old family, the discarded one, the thing she had upgraded from, and that her appearance at the wedding was not about Samantha at all but about how the mother of the bride would appear to the wealthy people she now belonged to.

I have known selfish people in my life, as everyone has, but there was always something almost breathtaking about the completeness of Laura’s, the way it left no room for anything else.