My sister blasted “INFERTILE, DIVORCED, FAILURE” across a 10-foot screen at her wedding while 200 guests laughed—my mother sipped wine, my father called it “just a joke.”

Paige is beaming. This is her favorite part of her own wedding. Not the vows. Not the first dance. But this. Watching me sit in the wreckage of my own humiliation.

Vivian raises her glass slightly, a silent toast to her own cruelty.

Harold has already turned back to Richard Whitmore, resuming their conversation as if nothing happened, as if putting infertile on a screen for 200 people is the social equivalent of a knock-knock joke.

I look down at my phone. The message is still there.

One word: begin.

I think about Ruth, about her hands shaking when she gave me that envelope, about the way she said,

“Don’t let them break you again.”

I’m not breaking.

My thumb presses send.

Three seconds pass.

The slideshow freezes. The screen goes black.

Paige frowns.

“Um, tech issues.”

She waves toward the back of the room.

“Can someone fix that?”

Behind the AV booth, Marcus pulls Paige’s USB from the projector and inserts mine. His hands are steady. He’s done harder things under worse pressure.

The screen lights up again.

White text on a dark background. Clean. Simple.

The Real Thea Lindon.

The room goes silent. Not the polite kind. The kind where every head turns and every conversation stops at once.