My hand tightened around the frame.
“How long?”
Jenna looked annoyed by the question. “We don’t know yet.”
“And where would I be sleeping?”
She did not answer.
She did not have to.
That evening, they hosted a “small family get-together.”
I learned about it after the food arrived.
People began showing up at seven with foil trays, wine bottles, garment bags, and laughter too loud for the walls. Jenna’s cousins filled my living room. Lorraine’s friends leaned against my kitchen counter. Someone opened the balcony door without asking. Someone else turned on music through my speaker after finding it on the shelf beneath the television. I ended up at the sink washing glasses because washing gave my hands something to do other than shake.
My condo filled with strangers using my first name as if we had all agreed on intimacy.
“Margaret, where do you keep serving spoons?”
“Maggie, is this chair okay to move?”
“Margaret, you have such great natural light. Jenna will make this place gorgeous.”
I heard it near the end of the night, when the room was warm and messy and no one thought I was listening.
A woman near the dining table asked Lorraine, “So you’re all staying here after the wedding?”
Lorraine laughed softly. “For a while. The timing worked out perfectly. Maggie has the space, and Alex wants everyone close.”
Alex wants.
Not Margaret agreed.
Not Margaret offered.
Alex wants.
I stepped onto the balcony and closed the sliding door behind me.
The night air was cool enough to sting my eyes. Below, the parking lot lights glowed on the hoods of cars. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked twice and stopped. I stood there with both hands on the railing, breathing slowly, trying to understand how a life could be crowded and lonely at the same time.
The thought arrived quietly.
If I let this continue, I will disappear inside my own home.
Not all at once. Not dramatically. One towel, one room, one wall, one decision at a time.
The next morning, I found the binder.
It was on my coffee table beneath a stack of bridal magazines, white with gold corners, Jenna’s neat handwriting on a sticky note attached to the front.
After Wedding Plan.
I should not have opened it.
That is what polite women are trained to think even while their lives are being rearranged around them.
I opened it anyway.
The first page was a calendar. Wedding. Honeymoon weekend. Move remaining boxes. Call utility company. Update mailing address. Discuss deed timeline with Alex.
My fingers stopped on that line.
Discuss deed timeline with Alex.
There were room assignments on the next page.
Master bedroom: Jenna and Alex.
Small bedroom: Maggie.
Guest room: Lorraine and Carl until rental search.
Living room: Tyler temporary.
Balcony refresh.
Dining hutch removal.
Curtain replacement.
My hutch, my balcony, my room, my name reduced to a square on a page.