The wedding planning started quietly.
The way most things started — not with announcement or fanfare but with the accumulation of small visible evidence that something was in motion. A bridal magazine on Patricia's kitchen counter that hadn't been there the Sunday before. Jade mentioning a venue in passing and then stopping herself with the specific self-consciousness of someone who had remembered who she was talking to mid-sentence. A conversation between Patricia and Gerald that stopped when I walked into the living room — not guiltily, not dramatically, just the natural pause of people shifting topics in the presence of someone for whom the topic was complicated.
I noticed all of it.
I noticed and I didn't say anything because there was nothing to say. The wedding was happening. The
