“You’re not her mother, Jenna. Stop acting like it.”

Greg said those words in our kitchen four days before his daughter’s wedding.

He didn’t shout or slam anything. He simply dropped his truck keys onto the granite counter and spoke with the weary certainty of someone correcting an obvious misunderstanding.

That calmness made it worse.

I stood beside the island holding a handheld steamer. Hannah’s pale blue rehearsal dress hung in front of me inside its plastic garment bag. I had driven across town three times in two weeks for alterations—the waist, then the hem, then a tiny hook that kept catching the silk.

Beside me sat a velvet box containing six antique pearl hairpins that had belonged to Hannah’s mother, Audrey.

Audrey died when Hannah was ten.

I had protected those pearls for months, and four days before Hannah’s wedding, I made the mistake of asking Greg one question.

“Do you think Hannah would want Audrey’s pearl pins woven into the back of her braid?”

That was it.

Greg rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Look, Jenna, I appreciate everything you’ve done.”

It already sounded like the beginning of an exit interview.

“You’ve been great around the house. You’ve helped Hannah. Nobody is denying that.”

I lowered the steamer.

“But?”

“This is Hannah’s wedding.”