THE SEVENTH CHAIR

On the morning of June fifteenth, the Paris sky was a rare, clear blue.

I woke at six, my heart racing not from happy anticipation but from an anxiety I didn’t dare name.

My closest friend, Léa, came to help me with makeup and my dress at Marcus’s studio, since my apartment was too small.

She fastened each button down my back, her hands trembling slightly, and I knew she was just as nervous as I was, both of us trying to appear calm for each other’s sake.

“Everyone will come,” Léa said, trying to reassure me as she noticed me checking my phone again and again. “Family can’t miss your wedding.”

By three in the afternoon, I received the first message of the day, from my mother.

“Wishing you happiness. Your father and I will try to stop by if we can.”

No longer wish, no question about how I was feeling.

I read that message three times, searching for any sign of regret, but found nothing except cold politeness.

At four o’clock, I stood behind the wooden door leading into the courtyard of Le Jardin des Lilas, where the wisteria arbor drooped down like a pale violet curtain, the scent of flowers drifting through the evening air mixed with the damp smell of old stone in the alley.

Léa cracked the door open to look inside, then turned back to me, her face trying to hide something.

“Camille…”

“How many people, Léa?”

She was silent a second too long.

“Six people,” she said quietly. “Including you and Marcus.”

I stepped up to the gap in the door, looking in myself.

Forty-two white wooden chairs were arranged in neat rows, draped with pale beige silk ribbons I had tied by hand a week earlier, my fingertips still remembering the cool, smooth feel of the silk.

Only four chairs were occupied.

Marcus stood alone beneath the arbor, one hand at his stomach, his face trying to hold steady, but I could see his jaw clenched tight, his eyes flicking repeatedly toward the gate, still hoping.

The officiant stood beside the table, checking his watch again and again, a flash of unease crossing his face each time he glanced at the rows of empty chairs.

I counted: Marcus’s parents, long divorced but there together for their son; Marcus’s close friend Antoine; and Léa.

No one from my family had come.

Not my father, not my mother, no relatives, not a single family friend I had called “uncle,” “auntie,” “aunt” for twenty-seven years of my life.

I stood there, my hand gripping a wedding bouquet already beginning to wilt in the June sun, feeling as though my whole body were sinking into a bottomless void, my legs no longer feeling like they belonged to me.

My phone buzzed in my dress pocket.

A message from my mother: “It’s too crowded here, I can’t get away. I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’ll come by later.”

I turned off the screen, didn’t reply, my fingers gripping it so tightly my knuckles went white.

In my head, only one question repeated itself like a refrain: was it true that, for twenty-seven years, I had never truly been part of my own family?

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