“Catherine,” my best friend Mia snapped from across the room, standing up so fast her chair scraped loudly against the hardwood. “Are you serious right now?”
“Oh, I’m quite serious,” Catherine replied, her thin lips curving into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I never trusted her. Mitchell deserves better than some little gold digger who probably got pregnant on purpose to trap him.”
The words felt like knives, each one finding a soft spot in my armor. Gold digger. Trap. I tried to stand, my pregnant body awkward and heavy, my center of gravity shifted, but my legs wouldn’t hold me. The room spun. The pastel balloons seemed to be closing in.
“Emma, breathe.” Mia was suddenly beside me, her hand warm and solid on my back. “Don’t listen to her. Don’t listen to any of them.”
But it was too late. The damage was spreading like a viral poison through the room. I could see it in their faces—the shift from shock to calculation. The doubt. The judgment. The whispered conversations that would start the moment the front door closed behind me.
My own aunt Linda, Natalie’s mother, stood up and brushed invisible crumbs from her dress. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Well, I suppose we should go,” she muttered to the room at large. “This is… unfortunate.”
Unfortunate. My marriage imploding in front of everyone I cared about was unfortunate, like a rained-out picnic.
