The whole room seemed to inhale at once.
“You said what?” Brandon rose to his feet and rounded on his mother.
Barbara crossed her arms. She actually crossed her arms, defiant, in front of a hundred and fifty people, in front of a crying seven-year-old.
“She’s being dramatic,” Barbara said. “I told her the truth, that’s all. Brandon, you will have children of your own one day. Your own flesh and blood. Those children will be my grandchildren, because
they’ll carry your blood. There’s a difference, and she’s old enough to understand it.”
Brandon looked down at the drawing in his hand. The crossed-out GRANDMA. The angry NO. Then he looked
back over his shoulder at the eight little suitcases sewn across my train.
“You humiliated my fiancée,” he said, slow and steady, “and you humiliated a seven-year-old child, in front of every single person I love. You planned it. You sat down with a needle and thread and
you planned it.”
“I was trying to stop you,” Barbara said, “from making a decision without understanding the consequences.”
“What consequences?”
Barbara flung a hand out toward Lisa, who flinched back from it.
“This,” she said.
And something in Brandon’s face settled. That was te exact moment, I think, that this stopped
being about a ruined wedding dress and became about something much bigger and much more permanent.
He handed me the frame and the drawing to hold. Then he crouched down again in front of Lisa, right down on the floor in his good suit, and took both her hands.
