**Part 2: The Wedding and the Slideshow**
The wedding was being held at an expensive vineyard upstate.
The kind of place with endless rows of grapes, polished wood, overpriced flowers, and guests pretending they could identify wines by smell.
When I arrived, an usher handed me my place card.
“Table nineteen.”
I thanked him and headed inside.
Then I found table nineteen.
It was shoved into the far corner of the reception hall beside the speakers.
And it was full of children.
Actual children.
Not teenagers.
One kid was coloring directly on the paper covering the table.
Another was stacking dinner rolls into some kind of fortress.
I just stood there.
Then I felt that familiar heat creep behind my ears.
The humiliation I thought I had outgrown.
Across the room, I spotted Dad holding a drink and talking to my uncle.
They looked toward me.
Dad gave me that tight little smile I had seen a thousand times.
Then he casually walked over.
He leaned close enough that only I could hear him.
“Try not to ruin anything tonight.”
I looked at him.
He continued.
“Like you ruin everything else.”
My uncle laughed quietly behind him.
Mom caught my eye from across the room.
Then looked away.
I didn’t argue.
I didn’t make a scene.
I just smiled.
Because there was something none of them knew.
For the previous few months, Elise had been preparing for the wedding.
Flowers.
Seating charts.
Menus.
Decorations.
And somewhere along the way, she had asked me to make a wedding slideshow.
Not the official wedding film.
She and Carson had already hired some artistic filmmaking couple for thousands of dollars.
This was supposed to be something informal.
Something to play during the speeches.
“Just make it cute,” Elise had told me.
Childhood clips.
College memories.
Old family videos.
Funny moments.
I smiled and agreed.
Then I started working.
At first, I genuinely intended to make exactly what she requested.
I searched through years of old footage.
Home videos.
Family phone backups.
Social-media clips.
Old recordings.
But the longer I watched, the more I noticed things I had forgotten.
Dad mocking me.
Mom praising Elise while barely acknowledging I was in the room.
Elise making little jokes at my expense.
The dismissive looks.
The sarcastic comments.
The moments that had seemed small individually.
On video, they looked different.
Clearer.
Harder to excuse.
So I began putting them together.
Not everything.
Just enough.
The video started sweetly.
Baby pictures.
Family vacations.
Birthdays.
School plays.
But little by little, the tone changed.
A comment here.
A forgotten clip there.
A joke that didn’t sound nearly as funny when played back years later.
Then I found the clip that changed everything.
It was from Elise’s bachelorette weekend.
She apparently didn’t know the camera was still recording.
She was sitting on a balcony with a pink drink in her hand, already a little drunk.
Someone off-camera mentioned Carson.
Elise laughed.
Then she said,
“It’s not like I love Carson-love him. But he has money, and after dealing with my family all these years, I deserve something good.”
She paused.
Then laughed again.
“Especially after Ian. God, he acts like such a victim. He’s basically a side character in a movie nobody wants to finish.”
I stared at the clip for a long time.
I almost deleted it.
Almost.
Instead, I kept it.
The finished slideshow was seven minutes long.
It opened with soft piano music.
Baby Elise covered in birthday cake.
Elise dressed as a fairy princess.
Me in the background wearing a homemade cardboard robot costume.
Everyone laughed when that image appeared.
I watched from the kids’ table.
The room relaxed.
People smiled.
My parents looked pleased.
Elise leaned against Carson.
Exactly what everyone expected.
Then came the school years.
Elise holding trophies.
Elise at dance recitals.
Elise graduating.
In nearly every clip, Mom and Dad were clapping, cheering, surrounding her.
Then the tone shifted.
Very slightly.
The music slowed.
The images remained familiar.
But now I appeared more often.
At the same events.
Standing behind everyone.
Watching.
Smiling.
Barely acknowledged.
In one old video, Dad’s voice could clearly be heard behind the camera.
“Don’t film Ian. Keep it on Elise.”
A relative laughed.
Then another voice said,
“Ian always looks like he’s about to cry.”
There was laughter in the recording.
The reception room became noticeably quieter.
People began glancing at one another.
Then came my college graduation.
There I was walking across the stage in my cap and gown.
My name was announced.
The camera zoomed toward me.
But instead of cheering, Dad’s voice came through clearly.
“Finally. Maybe now he’ll get a job and move out.”
The footage froze briefly on my face.
Then faded.
Mom shifted in her chair.
The next clip showed Elise opening a birthday envelope stuffed with cash.
She laughed at the camera.
“They didn’t give Ian anything last year. Dad said he was too old for presents.”
Then Christmas.
Dad handed Elise car keys.
She screamed with excitement.
The camera swept past me sitting silently on the couch.
By then, nobody in the reception hall was laughing.
You could hear forks touching plates.
Even the kids at my table had stopped playing.
My uncle leaned toward Dad and whispered something.
Dad’s face had gone dark.
Mom was holding a napkin near her mouth.
And Elise had stopped smiling entirely.
Then the balcony footage began.
The image shook slightly.
Wind moved through the microphone.
Elise’s voice came through the speakers.
“It’s not like I love Carson-love him…”
I didn’t even need to turn toward the head table.
I could feel the panic spreading from there.
The clip continued.
“But he’s loaded…”
Then came the line about me.
The side character.
The movie nobody wanted to finish.
When the clip ended, the screen faded to black.
A final sentence appeared in white letters.
Sometimes the quiet ones remember everything.
Then the projector shut off.
The lights came back on.
Nobody knew what to do.
Someone cleared their throat.
A glass clinked against a plate.
Then Carson said,
“What was that?”
