When Carol knocked my mom’s photo off my wedding table, she thought she’d broken me. Her smirk told me she believed she had won—finally got rid of my mom’s memory once and for all. But what she didn’t know was that in exactly 60 seconds, her life was about to change forever.My mom passed away when I was 19, and I’ve spent years grieving the loss of my best friend. My dad remarried a year later, and that’s when Carol came into the picture. From the start, she was cold and dismissive of my mom, even going so far as to call her “the ghost.”

Over time, she tried erasing every trace of my mom from our home, claiming it was time to “move on.”Despite her efforts, I made sure my mom’s memory would be part of my wedding. I put a photo of her at my table, a symbol of her presence in my life. Carol wasn’t happy, but I was prepared for her to lash out, and sure enough, she did. She stormed up to the table and smashed my mom’s picture, telling me I needed to stop “dragging her into everything.”

But I knew I’d already won.Just as she thought she’d won, the double doors swung open, and a man walked in with two officers behind him. They arrested Carol for financial fraud, something I’d been quietly investigating for months. She screamed, pointed at me, and accused me of setting her up, but I stood firm. “No, Carol,” I said, “This is just consequences.”

As she was taken away, my dad, who had been silent through it all, picked up my mom’s shattered frame and gently placed it back on the table. “She would have been so proud of you,” he whispered. It wasn’t the wedding I’d planned, but it was the one I needed—one where justice was served, and my mom’s memory was honored.