“I’m your child too,” I reminded her.
Her breath hitched.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
I squeezed her hand.
“Don’t apologize to me for what they did,” I said. “Just… stay with me. Tonight. Be here.”
She nodded, small and helpless.
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m here.”
Behind us, someone laughed loudly, and for a moment the sound felt wrong, like laughter in a church. But then I realized the people laughing weren’t laughing at me. They were laughing because the room needed it, because the tension needed somewhere to go.
The human body doesn’t know how to hold too much shock. It leaks out in strange ways.
I stood and leaned down to kiss my mother’s forehead.
“Eat something,” I told her. “Drink water.”
She tried to smile. It came out crooked.
“I can’t believe you knew,” she whispered. “Four months…”
“I didn’t want you carrying it,” I said. “And I didn’t want you trying to fix it.”
Her eyes closed briefly, as if she understood more than she wanted to.
“I always try to fix,” she admitted. “It’s what I do.”
“I know,” I said.
I straightened, and as I did, I caught sight of the bouquet on a table near the dance floor. White flowers, satin ribbon, delicate and absurd. The symbol of a tradition that felt hollow now.
The band shifted into another song, upbeat, familiar. The rhythm pushed people back into motion.
Diana appeared beside me again like she’d been summoned by my thoughts.
“Do it,” she said, nodding toward the bouquet.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Throw it,” she insisted. “Make it yours.”
I hesitated.
The bouquet had always been a joke to me. A ritual wrapped in superstition. But tonight, everything was being rewritten.
I picked it up. The stems were wrapped in ribbon, smooth and cool. The flowers smelled faintly sweet, clean and expensive.
I walked to the center of the dance floor.
The guests noticed immediately. A ripple of attention moved through them. People gathered, intrigued.
“Oh, she’s doing the bouquet toss,” someone said, voice excited like they were watching an unexpected plot twist.
Diana climbed onto a chair and waved her arms like an announcer. “Single ladies!” she yelled. “And anyone who wants to catch a bouquet for fun! Get over here!”
Laughter rose. Chairs scraped. A small group formed, not just unmarried women, but friends, cousins, even one of my male coworkers who shrugged and said, “Why not?”
I turned my back to them, bouquet in my hand, and for a moment I let myself feel the absurdity.
A wedding dress.
A room full of guests.
A marriage already dead.
And me, still standing.
I lifted the bouquet over my shoulder.
“Ready?” I called.
A chorus of excited shouts answered.
I threw it.
The bouquet sailed through the air, white and bright under the chandeliers, spinning like a soft weapon.
It landed in the hands of a woman I barely knew, someone from my father’s company, a quiet analyst named Nora who looked stunned to be holding it.
The room cheered as if this moment mattered.
Nora laughed, startled, then lifted the bouquet like a trophy.
Diana yelled, “Nora! You’re next!”
Nora’s eyes widened in mock horror. “Absolutely not,” she shouted back, and the room erupted in laughter again.
For a moment, it almost felt normal.
Not the normal I’d expected for my wedding, but a new kind of normal, the kind that grows after something burns down.
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