Madison’s voice cut through the music just enough.
I stopped.
She stood beside the donut wall, of all places, with frosting on the inside of her wrist and anger on her face. The donut wall had been her non-negotiable wedding detail. “Cake is expected,” she had said. “A donut wall is playful.” The custom wooden display had cost eighteen hundred dollars. I knew because she had forwarded me the invoice with the subject line: tiny crisis, can explain later.
She was still holding the folio.
No. Not holding. Pinching.
As if it had contaminated her.
“What was that?” she asked.
I looked at her.
“What was what?”
“Were you trying to embarrass me?”
I stared for a second, searching her face for the joke.
There was none.
“At your own wedding, Madison?”
“Yes. At my own wedding.” Her whisper grew sharper. “You sat there with that face.”
“My face?”
“You know the face. That lawyer face. Like you’re judging everyone.”
“I was quiet.”
“You were punishing me.”
The music shifted behind us. A bridesmaid in sage green passed, saw our faces, and quickly redirected herself toward the bar.
“It was a gift,” I said.
“A gift?” Madison gave a small laugh, disbelief wrapped in perfume. “Eve, that neighborhood is not me.”
“It’s a safe neighborhood.”
“It’s not aspirational.”
“It’s paid for.”
She rolled her eyes. Actually rolled them, like a teenager asked to unload a dishwasher.
“Do you hear yourself? Paid for is not a personality. Joshua and I are trying to build something. My clients are going to visit. We need good light. A better address. Something that makes sense for the brand.”
“The brand,” I repeated.
“Yes, the brand. My work. My future. I know you don’t respect it because you have your boring office and your boring contracts and your whole corporate ice queen thing, but some of us care about creating a life that feels aligned.”
Aligned.
I had paid for three of her alignment retreats.
She stepped closer, voice lowering. “I checked the listing.”
I blinked.
“You checked the listing?”
“Of course I did. You’re not subtle, Eve. I saw the paperwork in your bag at Mom’s house last month. I looked it up. I tried to be open-minded, but honestly, the layout is weird and the balcony faces the wrong direction.”
She had known.
The room seemed to tilt slightly, though I knew it had not. My mind rearranged the last few weeks with the efficiency of a document review. Madison texting me more often. Madison asking if I was “excited for the big day” with unusual sweetness. Madison mentioning casually that she and Joshua wanted to live somewhere “elevated.” Madison sending me Instagram reels of condos with marble islands and skyline views, not as suggestions, I had thought, but as dreams.
She had known about the gift.
She had researched it.
She had decided it was beneath her.
And she had still waited to laugh in front of one hundred and eighty people.
My mother arrived before I spoke.
Jessica moved through social discomfort the way certain women move through department stores, with speed, grace, and absolute confidence that staff will clear a path. Her pearls rested perfectly at her throat. Her lipstick had not smudged. She put one hand on Madison’s lower back and the other on my arm.