Claire Hale had spent most of her life learning how to take up as little space as possible while somehow holding everything together. That habit followed her into the sunlit chapel on the morning of her sister Madeline’s wedding, a place filled with pale flowers, polished wood, and the low hum of expectation. She arrived early, as she always did, purse tucked neatly under her arm, dress pressed, expression calm. She had been calm for months—calm through frantic planning calls, calm while mediating arguments between vendors, calm while smoothing over her parents’ complaints about costs they insisted they couldn’t cover.

Calm while quietly transferring money from her own account to secure deposits “temporarily,” as her parents put it, promises of reimbursement floating vaguely in the future. Family helps family, her mother liked to say, usually right before asking Claire to step in again. As guests began filling the chapel, Claire followed her parents down the aisle, her heels making almost no sound against the carpet. She assumed her place was beside them, the way it had always been—adjacent, supportive, slightly behind. But when they stopped at the row marked Immediate Family, the movement around her slowed into something unreal.