Tears streamed down my face as I stood at the back of the wedding venue, clutching my purse tightly. “Only real moms get a seat in the front,” my stepson’s fiancée had told me coldly when I arrived. After sixteen years of loving Nathan as my own, those words cut deeper than any knife.
I remembered meeting him for the first time – a shy six-year-old hiding behind his father’s legs. Instead of bringing a toy to win him over, I’d given him a book about dinosaurs, wanting to show I respected his intelligence. That thoughtful gift became his bedtime companion for months. When his father proposed to me, I made sure to get Nathan’s approval too, kneeling beside him as we baked cookies together.
As the wedding music began, I prepared myself to watch from the shadows. Then suddenly, Nathan turned from the altar, his eyes searching the crowd until they locked with mine. “Mom?” he called out loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Why aren’t you up here with us?” Those six words healed years of invisible wounds as I walked forward to take my rightful place beside my son.
