I was smiling and playing my part.
My fiancé stood waiting at the altar in his tailored black tuxedo, handsome as ever. That almost made me angrier.
When he reached for my hands, I let him take them.
His palms were sweating.
Good.
The pastor smiled warmly, turned, and said, “May we have the rings?”
I was getting so anxious by then.
I let him take them.
But before the best man could step forward, Diane rose from the front pew and came forward with the velvet box.
Confusion flickered across Oliver’s face.
The entire chapel fell silent.
Diane handed him the box.
“Mom… what’re you doing?”
“Open it,” she said calmly.
Oliver frowned, then laughed nervously before flipping it open.
The second he saw what was inside, his face turned ghostly white!
“Mom… what’re you doing?”
Oliver’s hands started shaking.
“Mom? What the hell is this?” he whispered.
“That’s the baby whose life you’re going to miss out on. The family you could’ve built with Cindy,” Diane said aloud.
Guests shifted uncomfortably in the pews.
Oliver looked at me desperately. “Cindy—”
What Oliver wasn’t aware of was that, months before our wedding, I’d discovered I was pregnant. The only people I told were my mother and Diane. I’d given both women images of the ultrasound and had planned to surprise my fiancé after our wedding.
Guests shifted uncomfortably.
Emboldened by Diane’s actions, I pulled my phone from my dress pocket.
Then I read the messages between Oliver and Madison aloud.
Gasps enveloped the chapel!
My mother, sitting at the front, covered her mouth.
