Chapter 2 - The Public Humiliation
A startled gasp rippled through the guests near our table, instantly dying into an uncomfortable, suffocating silence. Bianca didn't look at me; she stared fixedly at the shiny metal keys in her fiancé's grasp. The cheerful acoustic music playing in the background suddenly felt entirely out of place, like a soundtrack playing over a shipwreck.
Theo leaned down, his jaw tight. “We are leaving right now, Naomi.”
I shook my head slowly. Leaving at that exact second felt like surrendering the battlefield and accepting the degrading label Greg had just assigned me. The keys were still dangling in his hand, and he looked entirely too pleased with himself for landing the cruel punchline. I waited for Bianca to look at him and tell him to apologize. Instead, she reached out and snatched the keys from his palm, tucking them against her dress.
The SUV itself didn't break my heart. Theo and I owned two reliable vehicles, and I had never asked my mother for a handout. It was the calculated cruelty of her words—the deliberate mention of my medical checkups, the biting phrase “real bride,” and the terrifying certainty that I was supposed to sit there smiling while eighty people consumed my humiliation as entertainment.
I looked straight at Mom, waiting for her to reprimand Greg for crossing a line. Instead, she was smiling proudly, basking in the applause of her friends.
I pushed myself up from the chair, bracing one hand against the edge of the table until I found my footing. Theo started to rise to help me, but I shook my head, asking him to let me handle it. I had spent a lifetime saving my objections for the quiet car ride home after a gathering; this time, I wanted her to look me in the eye while her malice was still hanging in the air.
The short stretch of floor between our table and the gift display felt miles long under the heavy weight of eighty staring pairs of eyes. Bianca clutched the keys tighter against her chest as I approached. Mom’s triumphant smile tightened into a thin, irritated line, as if my mere act of standing up was a tacky interruption to her carefully choreographed evening.
“Mom,” I said, keeping my voice remarkably even despite my trembling pulse. “What did Greg mean by that remark?”
“It’s a celebration, Naomi. Please don’t start a scene,” Mom hissed under her breath, stepping forward so only the people directly beside us could hear.
I asked her why she felt the need to crown Bianca the “real bride” when I was her eldest daughter too, and why she thought my pregnancy checkups were appropriate punchlines for an engagement party. Bianca looked away, her cheeks flushing pink, but she remained silent.
Mom dismissed me with an impatient wave of her hand, claiming I was deliberately misunderstanding her gift announcement to steal the spotlight. She insisted she just wanted to make Bianca feel special. Hearing those words triggered a sharp, bitter memory: the three agonizing weeks I had spent hospitalized two years earlier with hyperemesis gravidarum, during which Mom hadn't visited me once because she was too busy planning a cruise. I had excused it back then as a stressful stretch at work; standing by that table, I could no longer lie to myself. She didn't forget how to show up for me—she simply didn't care to.
Frustrated, I reached out toward the keys resting on the table, intending to push them aside so we could have an honest conversation without Bianca clutching them like stolen loot.
Mom’s hand shot out, swatting my wrist away. “Those are your sister’s! Leave them alone!”
“I know they are,” I said, my voice rising slightly as the injustice of it all boiled over. “I’m asking why you had to humiliate me to give them to her!”
My voice carried farther across the hall than I intended. Behind me, I heard the scrape of chair legs as Theo stood up to intervene.
Before I could take another breath, Mom lost her temper. She planted both hands firmly against my shoulders and shoved me backward with surprising, vicious force.
The sudden impact caught me completely off balance. My heels stumbled backward into empty space, and my lower abdomen slammed hard against the sharp wooden corner of the heavy gift table. A sickening wave of white-hot pain tore through my stomach, stealing the breath from my lungs. I clawed at the heavy tablecloth to keep from hitting the marble floor, gasping for air.
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Then, I looked down.
A bright, terrifying crimson stain was spreading rapidly across the front of my light gray dress.
