Ida stared at Glen.
“What are you talking about?”
Glen set the microphone down for a moment.
Then he reached into the box and removed the document.
I couldn’t see what was written on it from where I stood.
But Ida clearly knew.
She pushed back from the table.
“No.”
Glen looked at her.
“You haven’t even read it.”
“I don’t need to.”
A murmur moved through the ballroom.
I looked at Glen.
“What is that?”
He took a breath.
“Something I should have dealt with months ago.”
Then he turned toward his mother.
“Tell her, Mom.”
Ida’s face hardened.
“This is a private family matter.”
Glen almost laughed.
“You stopped being concerned about privacy when you destroyed an eight-year-old girl’s dress on her mother’s wedding day.”
Several guests nodded.
Ida looked around the room.
“You’re humiliating me.”
“No,” Glen said. “I’m making sure you can’t rewrite what happened later.”
Then he handed me the document.
My eyes immediately went to the lawyer’s letterhead.
It wasn’t a lawsuit.
It wasn’t a police report.
It was notice that Glen had removed Ida from every position of authority she held in his personal affairs.
Emergency contact.
Medical proxy.
Access to a small family trust account his late father had created for him.
And, most importantly, a property agreement involving the house Glen and I planned to move into after the wedding.
I looked at him.
“I thought that house belonged to you.”
“It does.”
Ida interrupted.
“It belongs to this family.”
Glen turned toward her.
“No. Dad left it to me.”
That was when I realized this was bigger than a ruined dress.
Ida hadn’t only been trying to stop our wedding because she disliked me.
She believed she had something to lose.
Glen continued.
“For years, Mom has acted like Dad’s house is hers to control because she helped manage it after he died.”
Ida pointed at me.
“And now you’re giving it to her?”
“No.”
His voice stayed calm.
“I’m making it our home.”
Ida’s face twisted.
“Exactly.”
I felt my stomach drop.
There it was.
She wasn’t protecting Glen.
She was protecting her control over him.
Glen picked up his phone.
“Three weeks ago, Mom sent me this.”
He read the message aloud.
“She has a child already. Once you marry her, you’ll put that girl ahead of your real family. Cancel the wedding or I’ll make sure there isn’t one.”
I stared at Ida.
Glen continued.
“I thought she was angry. I didn’t think she’d actually do anything.”
Then he looked at Lily.
“But this morning she proved me wrong.”
Lily was sitting beside my sister.
She looked confused.
She understood enough to know people were talking about her, but not enough to understand why.
That made me even angrier.
Ida stood.
“This is ridiculous. It’s a dress.”
I couldn’t stay silent.
“No.”
She looked at me.
“It was something I made for my daughter.”
“You can make another.”
“That’s not the point.”
Ida rolled her eyes.
And Glen finally lost some of his calm.
“The point is that you deliberately hurt a child because you thought hurting her would make me choose you.”
Ida stared at him.
“I am your mother.”
“And Lily is my daughter.”
“She is not!”
The words echoed through the ballroom.
Nobody moved.
Lily’s smile disappeared.
Glen looked toward her.
Then back at Ida.
“That’s exactly why this ends tonight.”
He lifted the legal document.
“My lawyer filed the changes yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” I whispered.
Glen nodded.
“I was going to tell you after the wedding.”
Ida looked stunned.
“You did this before the dress?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Glen stared at her.
“Because the dress wasn’t the first thing you tried to destroy.”
My chest tightened.
“What does that mean?”
Ida suddenly moved toward him.
“Glen, don’t.”
But he stepped away.
Then he reached into his jacket and removed a second envelope.
“I found this in Mom’s desk last week.”
Ida went completely still.
Glen handed it to me.
Inside were printed emails.
At first, I didn’t understand.
Then I recognized the name at the top.
It was my landlord.
The landlord from the apartment Lily and I had lived in before Glen and I became engaged.
My hands started shaking as I read.
Someone had contacted him nearly a year earlier.
Someone claiming to be concerned about my “unstable household.”
Someone had suggested I was violating my lease.
Someone had even tried to convince him not to renew it.
The sender had used a fake name.
But one email contained a forwarded attachment.
The original file information showed where it had come from.
Ida’s personal email account.
I looked up.
“You tried to get Lily and me thrown out of our home?”
Ida’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Glen spoke quietly.
“That was when I hired the lawyer.”
The room erupted in whispers.
Ida looked around desperately.
“You don’t understand. I was protecting my son.”
“From what?” my sister shouted.
Ida pointed at me.
“From her!”
Glen shook his head.
“No, Mom. You were trying to make her desperate enough to leave town.”
Ida’s eyes filled with tears.
“You’ve changed.”
“I grew up.”
“For her.”
“For myself.”
Then Ida said something that silenced everyone.
“You think your father would have accepted this?”
Glen’s expression changed.
His father had been dead for five years.
Ida saw the hesitation and immediately pressed harder.
“He knew what family meant.”
Glen stared at her for several seconds.
Then he reached back into the box.
There was one final envelope beneath Lily’s ruined dress.
This one looked old.
Yellowed around the edges.
Ida saw it.
And whatever anger had been on her face disappeared.
She whispered,
“Where did you get that?”
Glen didn’t answer.
Instead, he handed the envelope to me.
Across the front, in faded handwriting, were three words.
For my son.
Glen looked at his mother.
“You spent years telling me Dad would be ashamed of the family I chose.”
Ida’s lips trembled.
“Glen…”
“But Dad left me something before he died.”
He looked toward Lily.
“Something you made sure I never saw.”
Ida grabbed the back of her chair.
And suddenly I understood.
The lawyer.
The house.
The old letter.
Whatever Glen’s father had written inside that envelope had terrified Ida far more than being exposed for destroying a dress.
To Be Continued…
