Chapter 1 - THE BRIDESMAID DRESS AND THE LOCKED DOOR
“Lila gets one wedding, Nora—your baby can wait forty minutes.” My mother said it while I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, bleeding through my pale blue bridesmaid dress, and gripping a makeup table so hard my fingernails split. For one stunned second, I thought I had misunderstood her, but the contractions slamming into my abdomen proved otherwise. The Brier Glen Hotel ballroom was mere feet away, already filling with two hundred guests, while my sister Lila fretted about her entrance music.
My mother, a woman who prized appearances above all else, viewed my labor not as a medical emergency, but as an inconvenient obstacle to Lila’s "perfect day." After I managed to get myself into a service hallway, my mother dragged me into a windowless storage room filled with linens and spare chairs, ripped my phone from my hands, and locked the steel door from the outside. I stood in the flickering fluorescent light, alone, terrified, and listening as the wedding music began to thunder through the walls, knowing my mother had just chosen my sister’s ego over my life and the life of my unborn child.
