A toast. My sister’s wedding. She mocked me in her speech.
My sister called me a single mother, unwanted by anyone. The room laughed. My mom added, “She’s a used product.”
Dad covered his mouth to stifle a chuckle.
Then the groom stood up and grabbed the mic. The room froze. I’m Morgan Ingram, 32 years old, an ER nurse and a single mother.
Three weeks ago at my sister’s wedding, in front of 200 guests, she grabbed the microphone and said, “My sister is a single mother, unwanted by anyone.”
My mother chimed in from her table. “She’s a used product.”
My father covered his mouth to hide his smirk. My 5-year-old son, Ethan, was sitting right beside me, his small hand gripping mine, his eyes wide with confusion as he watched everyone laugh at his mother.
But there was one person who didn’t laugh. And what he did next changed everything. Growing up in our four-bedroom colonial in Greenwich, Connecticut, I learned early that there were two types of daughters in the Ingram household.
The princess and the workhorse. Vivien was the princess. Four years younger, blonde like our mother, with the kind of effortless charm that made teachers forget about late assignments and boys forget about other girls.
From the moment she could walk, she was daddy’s little angel and mommy’s mini-me. I was the responsible one. Which in Ingram-family code meant I was the one who didn’t need attention because I could handle things on my own.
When prom came around, Vivien got a $500 Sherri Hill gown, blush pink, hand-beaded, the kind that made other girls gasp when she walked into the venue. When my prom came two years earlier, my mother had looked at me over her reading glasses and said, “Morgan, you don’t need all that. You’re the simple type.
It suits you.”
I wore a dress from the clearance rack at Macy’s. $63. I still remember the price because I’d saved my babysitting money to buy it myself.
Our bedrooms told the story, too. Vivien had the corner room with the balcony overlooking the garden. White furniture, fairy lights strung across the ceiling like something out of a magazine.
My room was at the end of the hall next to the utility closet, furnished with hand-me-downs from our grandmother’s estate. I didn’t hate Vivien for any of it. How could I?
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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