He never said, “my children.”
I had not been given a family seat.
No one had called to ask whether I needed one, and there was no reserved card with my name waiting near my parents.
So I stood at the back in a gray blazer, black heels, and a visitor badge clipped to my lapel, close enough to watch but far enough away that I would not appear in the family photographs unless someone deliberately turned the camera toward me.
No one did.
I had almost skipped the ceremony.
The invitation had arrived through my mother, not Daniel, and it had carried the careful tone she used whenever she wanted everyone in the same room without addressing why being together had become difficult.
She told me it would mean a lot to my brother.
She did not ask what it might mean to me.
Still, Daniel was my brother, and whatever existed between us did not erase what he had completed.
