They invited her to a lavish baby shower, left her without a chair, and sent her to a pub with a cruel “that place is for you,” but no one imagined how she would end up humiliating the entire family.

There were twenty-four seats and twenty-four specific names beautifully handwritten on the cards, but not a single one belonged to me. I looked at my sister and told her that there must be a missing place card here while giving her a final chance to fix the situation.

Whitney simply sighed and adjusted her hand over her pregnant belly with a practiced sense of elegance that made her look like a porcelain doll. She told me in a sweet voice that there just was not enough room for another chair and that it felt more painful than an outright insult.

“Since your schedule is always so unpredictable with that shop of yours, we just assumed you would not be able to make it today,” she added with a shrug. My family always referred to my independent bookstore in Cambridge as a schedule issue, treating my business like a silly hobby rather than a career.

Suddenly, our mother, Sandra, appeared in a perfectly tailored cream suit and the heavy pearls she usually saved for charity galas or family humiliations. She said that these high-end establishments have very strict fire codes and rules that I probably would not understand.