Teresa didn’t scream. She didn’t throw the wig at me. She just turned toward me, her eyes empty, like she was trying to place a face from a dream she had forgotten. That hurt more than any shouting match ever could.

Matthew came around the corner then. My son looked handsome, and seeing him made me feel a sickness in my gut that I can’t explain. He was wearing his gray suit with a white rose pinned to his lapel, the same way he did for his graduation.

He looked at the wig in her hand. Then he looked at me. Then he looked at Bill.

Bill muttered, “Matthew, don’t start.”

That was the first time the ice really broke. Bill knew something. He knew more than I did.

Matthew reached inside his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It wasn’t fancy stationery. It was a yellow hotel notepad from the Hampton Inn off Exit 61, the one with the little blue logo at the top.

My mouth tasted like copper. I recognized that pad.

Three weeks before the wedding, I had found one just like it on my kitchen island. It said: Teresa knows what you said about the money. She is laughing at you.

There was no signature. I believed it because I wanted to. I wanted a reason to despise her that wasn’t just my own petty, gnawing jealousy.

After that, the notes started appearing everywhere. One tucked into my Sunday bulletin. One under the windshield wiper of my Tahoe. One arrived in the mail with no return address at all. They all said the same thing. Teresa was mocking me. She was using my son for his status. She was waiting until the ink was dry on the marriage license to push us out of their lives for good.

I never showed them to Matthew. I showed them to Bill.

Bill always told me to ignore them, but he would take them from my hand, his eyes scanning the page, his jaw tight. I thought he was protecting me. Looking back, I sound like an idiot. At the time, it felt like we were in a bunker together, holding the line.

In the church, Teresa’s father stood gripping the back of a folding chair until his knuckles turned white. Marlene was sobbing, a high, thin sound like a bird.

Matthew unfolded the notepad. His hands were steady, but his face looked older than his twenty-eight years.

Bill whispered, “Son, not here.”

Matthew ignored him. He held the note up to the microphone clipped to his lapel, his voice echoing through the vaulted ceiling. “Mom, ask Dad whose handwriting this is.”

The church went deathly silent.

I turned to look at Bill. He was staring at the floor. He wasn’t looking at the wig. He wasn’t looking at the bride. He was looking at his own shoes, the ones I had polished for him that morning.