One of the old ladies, a face I did not know in a sea of faces I did not know, cleared her throat, and I snapped back to the present.

Guilt churned in my stomach.

I had a feeling it made me a very bad daughter to contemplate food at my mom’s wedding, but how else was I supposed to cope? That was my thing, just as much as Yulia’s thing was apparently tossing herself headlong into marriage.

“I’m getting married, baby!”

When she’d told me a few nights ago, my first thought was that she’d committed herself to a convent. Was that the right word, committed? My experience with nuns was a black habit of uncertainty, stitched together by way of The Sound of Music, Sister Act, and a single lyric from a Death Cab for Cutie song. Yulia definitely wouldn’t make it in there past two hours. After all, she was allergic to the word commitment. And also, she couldn’t hold a tune, and to achieve happiness in a convent, you apparently needed to be ready to belt out an inspiring ballad or two at a given moment.

But then I remembered that the Catholic phase was over before I was born, back when Yulia actually kept in touch with my grandmother and tried to be a good daughter and go to Mass.

I stared at her, mouth still pursed around an errant spaghetti noodle, trying to appropriately comprehend what she had just said.

Married.

“It’s not Dad, is it?” I finally choked out.

That was enough to shut off her glow, like a light bulb. We didn’t talk about Dad, not outwardly. Dad was an equal-opportunity vampire. He liked to aim for your jugular, but suck more than your blood.

“No,” Yulia said gently. “Of course it’s not Dad. It’s a brother from the halaqah I’ve been in—the learning group, at the masjid? You’ll love him. He’s really sweet. Moroccan.”

“Didn’t you join that two weeks ago?”

“Three weeks, Em. Honey.” Yulia reached out and covered my arm with her hand. Her voice was soft, in that tone she reserved for conversations about what had happened at school that warranted an entire sheet cake and half a container of frosting (“No judgments on that at all, honey, but if you need me to call someone . . .”) or, well, about Dad.

“It’s going to be different, this time,” she said.

(I’d heard that one before.)

“He’s different this time.”

I looked her in the eyes. There was that glow again. I couldn’t protest at all.

“I’m happy to hear that, Mom,” I said, and patted her hand back.

Yulia beamed from ear to ear.