Twelve days after he proposed, a knock came on a quiet Sunday morning. Lorraine stood at the door with a three-inch color-coded binder against her chest.

“I’ve narrowed the venues,” she announced, walking past me into the living room. “And the florals. Peonies are out of season, but I know a girl.”

She hadn’t asked whether we wanted a big wedding, or what we could afford. She had simply annexed the event. When I explained that we wanted something small and rustic, she looked at me as though I’d spoken in tongues, her mouth going thin.

We married in September. It was small, as I’d insisted, but the day had a shadow over it. When the chapel doors opened, I saw her: Lorraine in a floor-length gown of pale shimmering ivory, close enough to bridal white that my mother gasped audibly and my cousin had to be talked out of spilling red wine on it.

I looked at Corey at the altar. I watched his eyes scan the crowd, land on his mother’s dress, and slide right past it. He chose not to see. He always chose the path with the least resistance.

After the honeymoon it accelerated. Occasional calls became daily, sometimes twice daily. But the real breach came when she got a key. During the chaos of moving Corey’s boxes, a spare had gone missing.