She arrived early, helped set up chairs, and corrected exactly zero decorations.
When one of my cousins joked, “Wow, Paige, not wearing white this time?” the room went still.
Old Paige would have sliced her open with one sentence.
New Paige smiled and said, “No, I retired from bridal crimes.”
Everyone laughed.
Then she found me in the kitchen and asked quietly, “Did that hurt you?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
But the question mattered more than the joke.
That was how I knew she was changing.
Not because she became perfect.
Because she became aware.
Two years after the wedding, Dad sold the old family house. While cleaning the attic, we found boxes of Mom’s things: birthday cards she never sent, recipes written in her looping handwriting, photographs from years we barely remembered.
At the bottom of one box was another note.
This one was addressed to both of us.
