By the time I hit the highway from Beaufort, the sky had gone dark. I drove with both hands on the wheel and the radio off. Just the hum of the tires and the white lines rushing at me in the headlights.
I kept thinking about it. While I was getting my suit tailored, they were opening wedding gifts. While I was picking out a pocket square, they were looking at the proofs from the photographer. While I was trying to book a hotel for a wedding that didn’t exist, they were sitting around laughing about how it went.
It was almost ten when I pulled into the gravel driveway of the cottage on Isle of Palms.
The porch light flicked on. Griffin’s car was parked crooked, half on the grass, like he’d been in too much of a hurry to park straight.
Through the front window, I could hear voices. The soft flutter of pages turning. And laughter. My family’s laughter.
I stood on the porch with my hand on the doorknob. I took one long breath.
The door wasn’t locked. It never was.
I stepped inside, and the laughter stopped like somebody had hit a mute button.
They were all there in the living room. My mother on the couch with a glass of red wine. My father beside her, his mouth still open in the middle of a laugh. Griffin sitting on the rug with a pile of wedding photos spread out around him. Harper perched on the arm of the couch, her phone glowing in her hand.
Nobody jumped up. Nobody looked shocked.
They looked inconvenienced.
I walked in slowly. I felt like if I moved too fast, I’d crack down the middle.
“I know,” I said.
Griffin looked up and raised one eyebrow, like I’d wandered into the wrong house. “Know what?”
“That the wedding was last week. That I was never really invited.”
There was a beat of silence. Then Griffin chuckled. Then my mother made a dry little sound, almost a laugh.
My father cleared his throat and looked down at his hands.
Griffin tossed a photo onto the coffee table and leaned back on his palms. He smirked at me.
“Didn’t we tell you?”
The room tilted under my feet.
“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”
My mom leaned back into the couch cushions. Her wine sloshed against the side of the glass. “We just didn’t want any drama, Blaze. You always make everything so heavy.”
“I make things heavy?”
Griffin shrugged. “We wanted the day to be peaceful. Simple. Joyful. You don’t exactly bring that vibe, man.”
“You didn’t think I could behave myself at my own brother’s wedding?”
“You’ve just never really fit,” my mother said.
She said it calmly, like a doctor reading a diagnosis off a chart.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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