The blood buzzed in my ears.
“It’s my wedding.
She let out a short laugh, enough for the waiters to hear.
“And my son’s too. The groom’s family must be visible. Your parents… well, she shrugged. How pathetic they see trying to fit in here.
I don’t remember breathing after that phrase. I just remember seeing my father, from the door, in the suit I had paid in subscriptions for months, and my mother settling in the bag to pretend I hadn’t heard anything.
I asked for Diego. Nobody knew where he was.
And then I understood something terrible: if he had allowed that, I was not just displacing my parents. He was teaching me, before we got married, the exact place I would occupy in his life.
I saw the microphone prepared for the speeches, next to the lectern decorated with white flowers.
I walked to him.
Mariana tried to stop me, but it was too late. I took the microphone with a firm hand that I didn’t feel like mine, turned to the room full of guests who were starting to take a seat and said,
Before this wedding starts, there is something that everyone deserves to hear.
The first sound that came out of the microphone was a slight coupling. The second was silence.
Not the elegant silence of an expensive reception, but that tense silence that runs through a room when everyone feels that something is about to explode. The musicians stopped playing. The waiters stood still. I saw several heads turn at the same time, first towards me and then towards Patricia, who had been stuck next to the main table with tight lips.
