Before midnight, she had taken every wedding envelope—and by Monday, our bank had frozen the $68,400 wire for the house we were supposed to close on.
My name is Marissa Cole, though everyone except Gloria Barrett called me Mara. I was thirty-nine, an occupational therapist at an elementary school in Columbus, and until that morning, I had believed my future mother-in-law merely had poor boundaries.
Then Gloria entered in a fitted ivory gown covered with tiny glass beads. A train swept behind her. A sheer white wrap fell from the jeweled comb in her hair almost to the floor.
It was not technically a veil.
It was also not fooling anyone.
Our photographer, Callie, had been taking pictures of my dress beside the ballroom windows. The dress was simple except for a strip of lace sewn along the neckline. My mother had saved that lace from her own wedding gown before she died, and wearing it was the one part of the day that mattered more to me than flowers, music, or photographs.
At 8:47 on my wedding morning, my mother-in-law walked into the hotel ballroom wearing a white cathedral-length gown and told the photographer to move me out of her light.
