When he came down the stairs and saw me with that in his hand, he was paralyzed.

“It's not what you think”, he said.

I let out a short, dry laugh. —Then explain to me what I'm supposed to think when your brother invites you to a black-tie wedding and deliberately excludes your wife.

Ethan rubbed the back of his neck. «Connor said the guest list had been reduced. Vivian wanted something very select».

—Selected? —I repeated—. I'm not decoration, Ethan. I am your wife.

He kept defending them with that tired, hesitant tone that people use when they know they're wrong but expect you to let it go. Connor's fiancée, Vivian, came from a wealthy family in Connecticut. Every detail of the wedding had been carefully planned for photos, society pages and social media. The site was a restored estate on the outskirts of Newport, filled with marble fountains and imported roses. Apparently, I didn't fit the image. After much insistence, Ethan admitted that Vivian thought I was "too direct" and that my work as an investigative journalist might make some members of her family uncomfortable.

—So they invited you to remain silent —said.

He seemed guilty, but not guilty enough to stay home.

That was what hurt the most.

—You move on —said.

“Is my brother.”

“And I am your wife.”

After that, neither of them spoke. The silence between us felt like a final judgment.

The morning he left, I smiled. Not because I was okay, but because I no longer wanted to be respected. While he carried his tuxedo in the car, I sat on the kitchen counter and booked a week in Rome. In business class. A five-star hotel near the Plaza de España. Private food tours, museum tickets, and a budget to buy leather goods so exorbitant it almost made me laugh. By the time he returned to get his charger, I was already checking the confirmation emails.

“Have you booked a trip?”

I took a sip of coffee. "Rome."

"Really?"

“You are attending a luxury wedding without your wife. I respond to you with my own luxury.”

“That's childish.”

—No —I said calmly—. The childish thing was that your family excluded me and waited for me to stay home peacefully.

He looked at me, stunned, but still left.

For two days, I only posted brief images: champagne in flight, the sunset over terracotta roofs, my hand holding an espresso in a sunny square. Ethan wrote to me less and less. Then, on the night of the reception, while I was in the middle of a plate of truffle pasta on a terrace, my phone lit up with his name.

I responded to the noise: voices rising, glasses jingling, music breaking sharply.

—Claire —he whispered, his voice tense with panic—. You need to help me.

I leaned back in my chair, contemplating Rome shining beneath my feet.

—What happened? —I asked for.

And in the midst of the chaos that surrounded him, he said the last thing I expected.

“They can't pay for the reception.”

At first, I thought he was joking. Connor and Vivian had spent six months turning their wedding into a luxury spectacle: aerial drone footage at the rehearsal dinner, champagne walls with their initials, personalized perfume gifts brought straight from Paris. The florist alone probably cost more than my first car. So when Ethan said they couldn't pay, I thought he had gone crazy.