The wedding was small.
While I sat beside her in church, I couldn’t help but notice how people looked at my old shoes, then at her pearl earrings, and built a story out of the gap.
“That’s the boy,” a woman whispered once, not quietly enough.
“Eleanor’s project,” another said.
Once, Eleanor leaned over and murmured, “People are brave when they think they know the whole story, but remember, they don’t get to decide your truth.”
“Eleanor’s project.”
The nieces were worse than the church.
Marlene and Joanne came for every holiday.
Marlene made no secret of counting the silver and porcelain.
Joanne stared at me like I was a museum exhibit she found distasteful.
One afternoon, Marlene caught me in the kitchen while I was washing dishes.
“You’ll never get away with this, you know. It doesn’t matter if you’ve convinced her to leave you everything, we’ll contest it and win. You’ll go back to sleeping beside the dumpsters, where you belong.”
