Five weddings, three rehearsal dinners, my parents’ anniversary, and one cake I assembled with a fever. Every single one entered through the service door, propped up beside catering carts and trash bins while the party started without me. Afterward my mother would hug me and say they knew they could count on me, and for eleven years I mistook that for love. At Priya’s wedding I sat in my truck fixing a tier that had shifted on the drive, and Marisol came out with leftovers and told me not to take it personally, that I was not wedding material, that I was the one who made it happen. Then Beckett asked me what I actually wanted, and standing behind my bakery in an apron I said I wanted to be a guest at something once.

Wrenfield Vineyard, August 22, five o’clock. Eighty-four people, and somebody brought me a plate, and I sat down and let them. At seven fifty my phone lit with nine messages, and my mother and sister were standing at the gravel gate with twelve hundred dollars in an envelope because Sabine’s bakery had folded with three weeks to go. My mother put her hands on the gate and said the truest sentence anyone in my family has ever said to me. We knew you’d be here.