When the plates were cleared, Michael stood and raised his glass. “To Mom,” he said. “Who taught me that the loudest person in the room is never the strongest one.”
Everyone drank. Barbara hugged me for a long time and whispered, “I’m so sorry.” I told her she had nothing to apologize for — and I meant it. Janet was forty-one years old. Her behavior was not her mother’s fault.
Later, as the guests were leaving, my sister squeezed my arm. “How did you stay so calm?”
I thought about it. “Three years ago, I buried the love of my life,” I said. “A woman who survives that doesn’t get rattled by frosting on the floor.”
She laughed, and then she cried a little, and then we both did.
I kept the single sugar flower I’d picked up from the wreckage. It’s in the bakery box now, next to the yellowed one from 1976. Two flowers, fifty years apart. One survived a wedding. The other survived Janet.
Some things, I’ve learned, are sturdier than they look.
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Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental. This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes.