Mia was the sun around which my parents orbited. Her minor inconveniences were treated as national tragedies, while my major milestones were treated as afterthoughts. I had long ago accepted this dynamic, finding solace in my career as a graphic designer and, eventually, in Julian.
Julian was a rock. He was quiet, pragmatic, and wore unassuming gray suits. To my family, who valued flashy cars and loud boasting, Julian was just a “boring accountant.” But to me, he was everything. He listened, he remembered small details, and he loved me unconditionally.
We had been planning our wedding for over a year. The venue—a beautiful botanical garden—was booked. The caterer was paid. Two hundred invitations, embossed with gold foil, had been mailed out. The total non-refundable deposits were hovering around thirty thousand dollars, a sum Julian and I had saved meticulously.
Three months before the wedding, my phone rang. The caller ID flashed: Mom.
“Chloe,” she began, not bothering with a hello. Her voice had that specific, shrill tone of irritation she reserved almost exclusively for me. “We have a problem with the wedding date.”
I stopped typing on my laptop. “A problem? Mom, the date has been set for fourteen months. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Mia,” my mother sighed heavily, as if carrying the weight of the world. “She and Chad broke up.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said cautiously. Chad and Mia had been dating for three months. It wasn’t exactly a historic romance.
“She is deeply emotionally traumatized, Chloe. She is suffering. So, your father and I decided we need to take her on a spiritual healing retreat to Bali to help her recenter herself.”
