Page 13 of First Comes Marriage

Around her, conference attendees burst into applause, the lanyards around their necks swinging back and forth as they got to their feet.Shit. Now you’ve missed what he was saying about identifying peak demand times.

Sabrina reluctantly gathered her things. She’d have to hope it was in the slides the presenter had promised to upload to the conference website, or that it overlapped enough with what she’d learned in her undergraduate business administration program that she could wing it. Attending this conference might not get her back into Sebastian’s good graces, but if she learned enough to share with the Aster Bay Merchants’ Association, she might manage to get her pottery studio approved.

She moved with the crowd towards the last session of the conference—a keynote address on leveraging the unique character of your small town to increase tourism. As she approached the auditorium, she spotted Sebastian outside the doors. His suit jacket was slung over his arm, shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal tanned and toned forearms, as he spoke with a short, balding man in lime green suspenders. She was transfixed by the ease with which he moved, by the familiarity of it, and yet the awareness that all that ease turned hard and cold when he was around her.

For a moment he looked like the man she used to know, a man who would catch the spiders in the stock room in a paper cup and safely bring them outside, all the while teasing her for being afraid of such a small bug.

God, she missed that man.

Her cell phone buzzed to life in her hand, shaking her from her reverie. Her mother’s name flashed across the screen, and she backed away from the auditorium, ducking into an alcove off the main hallway as she answered the call.

“Can you please explain to me why I had to hear from Aunt Lucy that my youngest daughter has moved to Aster Bay?” her mother asked from the other end of the line.

“Hi, Mom.” Sabrina slumped against the wall of the alcove, setting down her notebook and bag of conference swag on the little side table.

“Answer the question, Sabrina.”

“I was going to tell you once I was settled.” It might have been true. At least, she hadn’t decidednotto tell her parents she was in Aster Bay.

Her mother huffed. “When have you ever beensettled?” Sabrina closed her eyes against the jab as her mother barreled ahead. “If I hadn’t called Aunt Lucy to invite her to the Labor Day Party, I never would have known you’d finally decided to move on with your life, though why you chose to go live with an elderly woman instead of coming home to your parents, I’ll never understand.”

You will not dump thirty years of resentment on your mother over the phone. You will not spontaneously combust from holding it in for one more day.

“I like Aster Bay, Mom. I always have.”

“You liked sneaking off to take your art classes when you were supposed to be looking for graduate programs,” her mother snapped

Would she ever live down the sin of embarrassing her parents by not following the prescriptive path they’d set out for her? For preferring working with her hands to sitting behind a desk all day?

“At least now you can put that whole unpleasant chapter inMaine behind you. It will be good to have the whole family together again for the long weekend,” her mother said.

Sabrina’s eyes flew open. “Aunt Lucy said she’d go to the party?”

“No, of course not. She’selderly, Sabrina. She has no interest in traveling for a party.” Her stomach sank. That meant— “We’re going with a patriotic theme this year. Make sure you wear something suitable. Preferably something blue or white. Red would be terrible with your coloring.”

“Mom, I wasn’t planning on going back to Brookline for the long weekend. You know, Aster Bay has a whole celebration of its own that I thought I might stay for this year.”

Her mother laughed. “Of course, you’re coming home. You know this is the largest social event of the year for our family. How would it look if one of my daughters didn’t attend?”

“How would it look towho?”

“To everyone! Don’t be obtuse, Sabrina. It’s not flattering.”

You will not hang up on your mother. You will not daydream about ways to sabotage her precious party.

“Oh! I almost forgot,” her mother said. But Sabrina knew better. Maryann Page never forgot anything. “We’ll have a special toast to celebrate Holly making partner. I expect you’ll want to prepare a few remarks to contribute. And dotryto find a suitable date to accompany you. You know how I hate odd numbers at a party.”

“Or I could not go.”

“You’ll come, Sabrina, and you will play nice. You and Holly used to be close before that unpleasantness with the Graham boy.”

“You mean before she blamed me for ruining her wedding? That unpleasantness?”

“Yes, yes, I’m aware of your version of events,” her mother said as though the truth were exhausting, as though Sabrina’s statements were merely one interpretation rather than the truth.

It had been ten years and still her mother couldn’t fathom that her perfect eldest daughter might have done anything wrong, that maybe Sabrina wasn’t a jealous monster hellbent on destroying her sister’s happiness. Ten years and nothing had changed.

You will not let her lack of faith in you hurt you anymore. You will not give her the power to affect how you feel about yourself. You will not question what you know to be true because of your mother’s inability to acknowledge it.

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