I was 27 when I got married. My mom, who passed when I was 19, wasn’t just my mother—she was my best friend. Her absence gutted me, especially when Dad remarried ten months later to Carol—a woman who erased every trace of Mom, even calling her “the ghost.”

When Brandon proposed, I made sure Mom would be with me. I framed my favorite photo of her and placed it on the head table with a plaque: Forever guiding me.

At the reception, Carol strutted like the star. But when she saw the photo, her smile vanished. She smashed the frame, hissed, “She’s dead. I’m the woman of this family now.”

I didn’t flinch.

Right on cue, detectives entered. “Carol, you’re under investigation for fraud and identity theft,” one said. She screamed as they showed evidence of her stealing from Dad’s business.

As they cuffed her, Dad picked up the photo and whispered, “She’d be proud of you.”

And she would’ve.

It wasn’t the wedding I imagined. But it was perfect.